Joel Hofer made 28 saves for the Blues (7-7-1), and Pius Suter scored with 52 seconds left in regulation to spoil Garand’s bid for a second shutout.
“I think what’s missing is our players going to the hard areas consistently,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “Like we should have two guys there, right now we have one guy.
“It was almost a shutout, so it's almost like the third time. We have to commit to going to harder areas so that we can generate more 5-on-5 greasy goals."
Garand, who played a total of three career NHL games before this season, said he’s still figuring out how to handle such a heavy workload at this level.
“Obviously it’s my first experience going through this in the NHL and there are lots of things you can learn,” the 24-year-old said. “We play a lot of games, how to manage that physically and mentally. It’s new. Just handling that, and you know, at the end of the day, just figuring out what I want to do with my game and me as a human being and just try to battle for the guys and help this group win.”
It was the first win for Garand since he made 29 saves in a 5-2 home victory against the Anaheim Ducks on Oct. 19. Since that game, he had been 0-4-0 with a 4.21 goals-against average and .845 save percentage entering Tuesday.
“He’s had a lot of really good starts for us, he’s also had a heavy workload,” Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said. “I think this game was an important one for him. He wanted to bounce back and have a solid night for the group and he did.”
The Blues, playing the second of four-game road trip, saw a two-game win streak end.
“I think we need to do a better job of getting to the net with our bodies and making it harder on their goalie,” Blues forward Mason McTavish said.
Fox gave the Rangers a 1-0 lead at 1:49 of the second period when he beat Hofer with a wrist shot over the glove. Tye Kartye took a pass from Miller and broke into the Blues zone, but instead of cutting toward the net, he turned around and found Fox wide open coming down the middle.
“I guess it’s always nice to contribute in the goal category,” said Fox, who has 10 points (two goals, eight assists) in his past six games. “It was a hard-fought game, I thought the (penalty kill) was great and the (power play) we had some good looks. We’d like to get one, but overall, we felt pretty good about it.”
Though the Rangers were 0-for-3 on the power play, they killed off all six of St. Louis’ power plays, five of them for the full two minutes. The last Blues power play came with 22 seconds left in the game. The Rangers entered Tuesday with the third-best penalty-kill percentage in the NHL (89.1 percent).
“It’s a lot to ask to have the penalty kill have to kill that many opportunities against a really good power play,” Sullivan said, “but I thought those guys that were on it did a terrific job.”
The Rangers’ new third line of Will Cuylle at center between Bjorkstrand and Tolvanen made it a 2-0 at 9:01 of the third period.
