Recap: Rangers Suffer Slip-Up in Homestand Finale

With 20 minutes in the books on Saturday night, Madison Square Garden was buzzing once again and there was a lot on the table that Ranger fans could feel good about: Mika Zibanejad had scored yet again and the Garden was chanting his name. Igor Shesterkin was healthy and back, and the Garden was chanting his name, too. And with a chance to close more ground in the playoff chase, the Rangers were holding a lead against a bitter rival on a Saturday night on Broadway.
Inside the home dressing room, though, the Rangers saw trouble brewing.
"We didn't feel good at all after the first period," David Quinn said afterward. "It was nice to be up, don't get me wrong. But we didn't feel good at all about the way things were going in the first period even though we were winning."
Period 2 was barely a minute and a half old before the piper came for payment. Kyle Palmieri and an ex-Ranger, Freddy Claesson, each scored for New Jersey in the first 1:36 of the second period, and Travis Zajac and John Hayden added goals 25 seconds apart late in the frame, as the Devils rode a four-goal second to spoil the finale of the Rangers' four-game homestand, sending the Blueshirts to a 6-4 loss on Saturday night.

"They were better than us in every capacity," Quinn said. "Disappointed -- but that being said, one of things we've talked about when things are going well is, we've got to move past it. And we've got to move past this, too. We'll go on a road trip here, and our season's not over by any stretch of the imagination" -- they stand just three points shy of the playoff cut line. "We've got to get over this and get ready for Dallas."
That road trip includes three games out West and begins on Tuesday in Big D, on the heels of this four-game Broadway stay that included Zibanejad's historic five-goal night that shook the Garden on Thursday. Two days removed from that, Zibanejad scored in the first period of Saturday's match, continuing his torrid stretch that has him on the cusp of becoming the Rangers' first 40-goal scorer since Rick Nash.
His 39th of the season was goal No. 21 in the 20 games since the All-Star break, most in the NHL. His latest goal streak is now four games long -- during which he has scored nine times.
Filip Chytil got the Rangers' other first-period goal, and Tony DeAngelo and Greg McKegg also scored -- DeAngelo making it five goals in four games against the Devils this season and taking over fourth place in scoring among NHL defensemen.
But Palmieri scored twice for New Jersey to hit the 25-goal mark this season; Claesson, in his fifth game as a Devil, got his first goal since Dec. 8, 2018 as a Ranger; and Zajac had his first multi-goal game of the season, scoring into an empty net in the final minute of play. Mackenzie Blackwood made 31 saves at the other end to go 1-1 at the Garden this season despite allowing nine goals in less than five periods of play.
The Devils, still well outside the playoff picture, improved to 6-1-2 in their last nine games, and forged a split of the season series with the Rangers.
"We couldn't find a way to get back to our game," Zibanejad lamented. "Just didn't have the answer, and then we dug ourselves a hole. Going forward, the playoff type of games we have in front of us, we can't do that."
"It's not what we were looking for -- we had some good momentum and felt good about ourselves, so that's frustrating for sure," added Staal. "We just have to understand that playing well as a team together, supporting each other, all those things that good teams do down the stretch to win hockey games to get in (the playoffs), you've got to repeat it over and over again if we want to get to where we want to go."
Shesterkin made 18 saves before giving way to Henrik Lundqvist, who wiped away all five Devils shots in the third period (the first one a Jack Hughes breakaway) in his 887th game, now eighth all-time. (And by the way, the Garden was chanting his name, too.)
Shesterkin had been 9-1 with a .940 save percentage in his first 10 NHL starts, but on Saturday was playing his first game since Feb. 22 after he suffered a rib injury in a car accident on the 23rd. He had been expected to be re-evaluated two weeks after the accident; instead, he was ready to go after 13 days, with one morning skate and one full practice under his belt.
"I felt good," Shesterkin said through an interpreter, "but I wasn't able to help my team win, so I don't feel good about that."
"Igor talked about helping the team win -- there were like three, four tipped shots right in front of him," Staal said. "That's just not good enough as far as defending."
Added Quinn: "The goaltender was the least of our problems."
Chytil's goal got the scoring started 5:34 in off a beautiful feed circling the net from Julien Gauthier, who picked up his second assist as a Ranger. Adam Fox assisted on that one, then held a puck in the zone and played catch with Zibanejad at the circles for a beauty at 7:18, with Palmieri's first goal, a bank-in from an angle, sandwiched in between.
But once Palmieri got to the front of the net to score 44 seconds into the second, and Claesson skated into all kinds of space to score trailing a rush at 1:36, Quinn used his timeout to try to put his team back on course. But they could never quite find it.
Now it's onto a three-game road trip to face Dallas, Colorado and Arizona, and "everyone in the room needs to understand it's only going to get harder," Staal said. "The teams we're playing coming up are all in it, and points are hard to come by. And when you have a performance like that this time of year you're going to lose.
"We'll get that," the veteran blueliner said. "We'll come back. We've responded well all year long after tough losses, and I think we'll do that again."