Nothing seems to be going right these days for the Broadway Blue Shirts.
Sitting now at 6-6-2, and losers of four of their last five games, the New York Rangers have not played with any of the vim and/or vigor that saw them make an entirely improbable run to the Stanley Cup Finals last season, before losing to the eventual champion - the Los Angeles Kings - in five games.
The team played especially poorly in their most recent loss at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers, a listless 3-1 affair, leading head coach Alain Vigneault to say that describing the team's play as disappointing "would be the understatement of the week," according to Andrew Gross of The Record.
Rangers assistant coach Ulf Samuelsson, offered this scathing critique to MSG's John Giannone during the second intermission of the game; "Collectively, that could be the worst two periods I have seen since I got here and that is a lot of games. Hopefully that is a low point for us. We are leaving it to the leadership to rally the troops, we are not competing at a level that we need to, it is not about xs and os. We are getting crushed by Edmonton in our building and that is embarrassing."
There seemed to be unanimous agreement amongst Rangers players after the game that the effort and the energy were nowhere to be found.
"(The effort) was unacceptable. This is a big wakeup call for us," said defenseman Marc Staal, according to Steve Zipay of Newsday.
"Maybe it was our second or third wake-up call," goalie Henrik Lundqvist said, per Pat Leonard of the NY Daily News. "When the energy's not there, it's hard to play this game."
Lundqvist was the lone bright spot for the team in the loss, and saved the listless effort from being an atrocious one.
"It could have been 6, 7-1 if not for (Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist)...Execution, reads, it wasn't even close," Derek Stepan told Zipay.
The Rangers, missing Captain Ryan McDonagh, are clearly a rudderless ship at the moment. If they're to return to winning form, something needs to change - and soon.
