{"id":71919,"date":"2025-12-16T04:40:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71919\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T04:40:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T04:40:07","slug":"rangers-doomed-by-special-team-failures-in-loss-to-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/71919\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers doomed by special team failures in loss to Ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Special teams hasn\u2019t been a strength of the Rangers this season, but now it has become a detriment.<\/p>\n

With their former power-play specialist Chris Kreider at the other end of the ice, the Blueshirts gave up goals on both the penalty kill and with the man advantage in an empty-net-abetted 4-1 loss to the Ducks on Monday night at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n

Head coach Mike Sullivan continues to trot out the five-forward alignment on the power play to no avail.<\/p>\n

The Rangers may have been missing a key piece in Mika Zibanejad, who was benched for missing a team meeting Monday morning, but they went 0-for-4 on the power play in the loss and gave up the first goal of the evening after failing to capitalize on a five-on-three advantage.<\/p>\n

Anaheim\u2019s game-winner came off a snipe from Cutter Gauthier at the 5:51 mark of the third period, the very moment Anaheim\u2019s power play expired.<\/p>\n

\"AnaheimDucks defenseman Jackson Lacombe (2) scores a goal past New York Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin (31) off a rebound. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we played a pretty good game five-on-five, it basically came down to special teams today,\u201d captain J.T. Miller said after the loss, which dropped the Rangers to 4-9-3 on home ice this season. \u201cThe penalty kill was really good today, just gave up one there at the end. The power play wasn\u2019t sharp enough, and we gave one up, so that\u2019s the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since losing Adam Fox to a shoulder injury, the Rangers have converted on just two of their 17 power-play opportunities to go along with two short-handed goals against. Coming into Monday\u2019s contest, they were ranked 14th in the NHL with a 20.3 power-play percentage.<\/p>\n

Sullivan recently rearranged the power play to have a defensively conscious point man in Zibanejad, but his absence made the group even more dysfunctional than it already was.<\/p>\n

Asked if Zibanejad missing a team meeting was a one-time thing or if it happened before, the veteran coach declined to answer.<\/p>\n

\"AnaheimDucks left wing Chris Kreider (20) waves to fans after the New York Rangers play a tribute video. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, I\u2019m not going to get into specifics on why we make decisions the way we made them, OK?\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe strongly in a process that we\u2019ve put in place here for our team, and it\u2019s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The special teams battle was at the crux of this matchup.<\/p>\n

When Mikael Granlund took a seat in the box for hooking and the Ducks were assessed a bench minor for too many men on the ice in the second period, the Rangers had a prime five-on-three opportunity for 22 seconds.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead the expert take on the Blueshirts\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Rangers, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Instead of the Rangers using it to their advantage, however, they handed over the lead.<\/p>\n

Ex-Rangers captain Jacob Trouba, in his return to MSG, sprang Ryan Poehling for a short-handed breakaway with a pass off the boards. Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin made the initial save, but Jackson LaCombe whacked at the puck before Will Cuylle\u2019s skate pushed it over the goal line.<\/p>\n

The home team managed to answer at the end of the middle frame.<\/p>\n

Matthew Robertson\u2019s slap shot from the top of the zone took a fortunate bounce over Ducks goalie Lukas Dostal. While Vincent Trocheck attempted to bat the puck in \u2014 which the refs initially believed he did and waved it off for high sticking \u2014 it actually went in off Dostal\u2019s stick and Robertson was ultimately credited with the game-tying goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we did a good job at having pressure reads, and it sucks giving one up like that,\u201d Braden Schneider said of the penalty kill. \u201cAnd especially for a game winner. You need to do a bit of a better job on that one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Special teams hasn\u2019t been a strength of the Rangers this season, but now it has become a detriment.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[11810,36276,9,11,10,541,539,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-71919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-anaheim-ducks","9":"tag-chris-kreider","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-new-york-rangers","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71919","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=71919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}