But they did so without Kevin Hayes, who is nursing an upper-body issue and stayed off the ice for a third straight day; the Rangers' second-leading scorer is "still day-to-day," Quinn said. Hayes had 16 points (5-11-16) over an 11-game stretch before sitting out Friday's game, the first he has missed this season. And the Rangers certainly could have used him in a game in which they spent more than 15 minutes playing at least one man down; Hayes leads all Ranger forwards in penalty-kill time at 2:05 per game, and has scored twice shorthanded this season.
"This is more of a nagging thing, it's not anything serious," Quinn said on Saturday. "With him, he's such a quick healer, you think he's going to be out three or four days and boom, he's coming back. It's still day-to-day - it wasn't good enough to skate today. But it's really just a nagging injury."
Perhaps the Rangers' best penalty-killer on Friday night was Alexandar Georgiev, who made 15 saves on Avalanche power plays among his season-high 41 stops in the game. On Sunday the rookie netminder will back up Henrik Lundqvist, who is looking to bounce back from what he called "probably my worst game," a 7-2 loss to Pittsburgh on Wednesday that was Lundqvist's first regulation defeat in seven games, since Dec. 10.
Lundqvist is 8-1-1 with a 2.14 goals-against average and .927 save percentage in his career against the Coyotes.
Four of the pucks the Avalanche got past Georgiev on Friday came on deflections in front of the net - one of them off a Ranger penalty-killer's stick - and Quinn said after the game that the Rangers' net-front coverage, an issue that was top of the coach's mind following one November loss to the Islanders, would be a topic of discussion as the Rangers moved on to Arizona.
On Saturday, though, "we talked about a lot of things, and I don't know if so much it was about one particular thing - it was much more about our mentality," the coach said. "I wasn't concerned about going out and working on a particular piece of our game - we did work on a couple of things, but it was much more about our mindset. We've got to come with a different mindset tomorrow.
"Not taking a million penalties, better changes, more dialed into your responsibilities in the structure. To me, it was much more mental than it was physical. Because like I said, as that game went on and it was out of hand, we had a lot of guys competing still, blocking shots. But to me the mental side of it was something that we let slip (on Friday)."
The Coyotes' shootout loss on home ice to New Jersey on Friday was their third consecutive loss and 11th in their last 15 games (4-10-1). At 2.46 goals per game they rank 29th in the NHL; when they came to New York to face the Rangers on Dec. 14, former BU Terrier Clayton Keller led the team with eight goals. He still has eight, having not scored since Dec. 1 (16 games).
And you can add Nick Schmaltz to the Coyotes' ballooning list of injuries to key players this season. The center, acquired from Chicago on Nov. 25 for Ryan Strome's brother Dylan, had 14 points in 17 games since the swap but was placed on injured reserve on Thursday and is considered week-to-week with a lower-body injury.
Arizona will be wrapping up a four-game homestand before heading out for nine of their next 11 on the road. The Blueshirts conclude their three-game trip in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Following the back-to-back losses to Pittsburgh and Colorado, Zuccarello said, "You go through stretches during the season when it's like this and you try to look for answers everywhere. The answer is just to play the game that you know how to play, and play a simple, simple game, and play together. That's hockey."
