Rangers Come up Short in 3-2 Opening Night Loss to Nashville

Mika Zibanejad had spoken this week about how the excitement for Opening Night was building in the Rangers' room, that he and his teammates couldn't wait to get their season started.
When the season-opener was over Thursday night, Zibanejad stood at his locker talking about the positives in the Rangers' first game of 2018-19 - but as he did so, he was shaking his head and staring at the carpet.
"It's really hard to talk about all the positives and all the things we did well when we don't win," the Rangers center said. "You look forward to this game all summer and all training camp and you don't come out with a win. That sucks."
Among the positives were that in the first game of the David Quinn Era, the Rangers stood toe-to-toe with one of the NHL's heavyweights, last season's Presidents' Trophy winners, until a blueline blast from PK Subban broke a tie 3:28 into the third and sent the Rangers on their way to a 3-2 loss to the Nashville Predators on Opening Night at Madison Square Garden.

But following his first game as an NHL head coach, Quinn was far more focused on what he wants his team to shore up - specifically, the number of odd-man rushes the Rangers allowed.
"I just thought we were hesitant," Quinn said. "We hounded the puck the way we have at times during the preseason, but it's certainly the most odd-man rushes we've given up in any game we've played.
"We've got to be harder on the puck, we've got to do a better job of playing in-your-face hockey. I thought we backed down too often and just gave them too much room. A team with that kind of speed and that talent, you give them that much room and time and space, you're going to be caught in a track meet."
Jesper Fast and Pavel Buchnevich scored for the Rangers, with Fast's goal tying the game in the second period off a slick setup from 19-year-old center Filip Chytil, who has played four games in his career at the Garden and has points in three of them. But Subban and Filip Forsberg each scored for Nashville, and Colton Sissons added a goal and an assist- including the empty-netter that wound up being the game-winner.

Henrik Lundqvist (31 saves), meanwhile, went stop-for-stop with the reigning Vezina Trophy winner, Pekka Rinne, whose 34 saves - 28 of them in the final two periods - were enough to snap the Predators' four-game losing streak at the Garden.
"When we had our breakdowns, he made the saves," Rangers defenseman Adam McQuaid said of Lundqvist. "He gave us a chance."

It was McQuaid who was part of the game's pivotal sequence. Just less than 3½ minutes in, McQuaid - who was making his Rangers debut after playing his first nine NHL seasons with Boston - crumpled in the crease after taking Kevin Fiala's stick to the chops, which caused a stoppage in play but no penalty, keeping the faceoff in the Rangers' zone. Nashville's Colton Scissons won that ensuing faceoff to Mattias Ekholm, who teed up Subban for a one-time rocket from straightaway.
Zibanejad said that when the penalty wasn't called, "We talked about it on the bench to calm each other down. I thought we responded well to it."
In fact, numerous Rangers - the coach included - were encouraged by how they continued to get better as the game went on, and pressed for an equalizer in the third. Rinne made point-blank stops on the dynamic Jimmy Vesey - who had at least three glorious chances to score, set up at least three others, and somehow was held off the scoresheet - and Mats Zuccarello in the waning minutes. Sissons' empty-netter with 1:24 left became the winner when Buchnevich finished off Zibanejad's feed to the front 34.1 seconds from the end.
The Rangers will have a practice day to go over it tomorrow, before hitting the road for weekend games in Buffalo and Carolina.
"I like how hard we work," Lundqvist said. "We're going to improve each game. It's going to come."