The Rangers extended the worst home record in the NHL this season, while also continuing another disturbing losing trend Sunday night.<\/p>\n
The Blueshirts now have played five sets of back-to-back games among their first 31 contests, and they have lost on the back end every time after allowing the tying goal in the final minute of regulation before falling 3-2 to the Golden Knights at the Garden on Jack Eichel\u2019s net-crashing goal with eight seconds remaining in overtime.<\/p>\n
Added to Saturday\u2019s OT loss at home against Colorado, the Rangers came out sluggishly before taking a 2-1 lead in the second period. But they did not receive a power play in the game \u2014 punctuating coach Mike Sullivan\u2019s displeasure with the officiating, especially late in the game \u2014 in falling to 3-9-2 at home this season and to 15-13-3 overall ahead of Wednesday\u2019s visit to Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe clearly didn\u2019t have our legs or our energy at first, but I thought the guys were storming really well after that,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cI thought we competed hard and in the second period we were the dominant team.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive the guys a lot of credit, how we responded, We got down a goal and just kept fighting. I thought after the first [period], we competed really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rangers goaltender Jonathan Quick (32) defends the net during the second period when the New York Rangers played the Vegas Golden Knights Sunday, December 7, 2025 at Madison Square Garden. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
Sullivan was visibly unhappy, though, with coincidental roughing minors called on Rangers defenseman Will Borgen and former Rangers center Brett Howden with under two minutes to play in the third with the Rangers nursing a 2-1 lead on goals in a 17-shot second period by Mika Zibanejad and Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re.<\/p>\n
That enabled the Golden Knights to skate 5-on-4 rather than 6-on-5 after they pulled goalie Carter Hart in the closing minute of regulation, giving them more room to operate.<\/p>\n
Tomas Hertl cashed in a rebound in front of Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick for the equalizer with 51.3 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n
Rangers goaltender Jonathan Quick (32) reacts after allowing Vegas Golden Knights Jack Eichel to score the game-winning goal late in overtime on Sunday, December 7, 2025 at Madison Square Garden. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the coincidental minors had a huge implication,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cThere\u2019s a big difference between a 6-on-5 and a 5-on-4 when you\u2019re trying to defend it, and it had a huge implication.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sullivan also was not pleased about an uncalled trip of Rangers defenseman Matthew Robertson in overtime, saying \u201cthe trip in overtime? You guys can be the judge.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Quick made 23 saves in his first start since Nov. 22 due to a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n
Vegas opened the scoring just 36 seconds into the match, taking advantage of Vladislav Gavrikov\u2019s turnover along the defensive-zone boards with a conversion by Howden at the left post for a quick 1-0 deficit.<\/p>\n
The sluggish Rangers managed just one shot against Hart over the first 14-plus minutes, and three in the first period.<\/p>\n
Zibanejad finally drew the Rangers even with his 11th of the season on a rebound stuff at the right post off Lafreni\u00e8re\u2019s deflection of Robertson\u2019s left-point wrist shot at the 9:08 mark. It was Zibanejad\u2019s fourth goal in his last six appearances and extended his point streak to seven games.<\/p>\n
The Garden crowd erupted when Lafreni\u00e8re ripped home his seventh \u2014 but first non-empty-netter in seven games since Nov. 24 vs. St. Louis \u2014 a roofed wrist shot off a feed from Zibanejad that whistled over Hart\u2019s glove for a 2-1 home lead at 13:01.<\/p>\n
Rangers center Mika Zibanejad (93) is greeted by his teammates on the bench after scoring a goal at Madison Square Garden Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
Quick nursed that slim cushion until Hertl forced overtime, where Eichel got to a stretch pass off the boards ahead of Robertson and swept it in to send the Rangers to yet another hard-to-take defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did it to ourselves. There was no urgency [to start] the game. We dipped our toe into the game \u2026 and that\u2019s unacceptable,\u201d captain J.T. Miller said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to develop a standard and an identity around here and that was certainly not it. \u2026 It\u2019s just not nearly good enough at home. For some reason we\u2019re very content with not bringing our \u2018A\u2019 game right now, and it\u2019s disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rangers extended the worst home record in the NHL this season, while also continuing another disturbing losing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,541,539,319,25552],"class_list":{"0":"post-63920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news","11":"tag-new-york-rangers","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-vegas-golden-knights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}