The Rangers lost for the fifth straight time Tuesday, falling 1-0 to the Stars. All five losses have come against teams in playoff position, three of the games needing extra time to be decided. The effort is there, the execution and goal-scoring, not surprising without Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes, is not. New York is at Detroit on Thursday.
Extended game recap:
David Quinn Post-Game:
Lines:
89 Buchnevich - 93 Zibanejad - 26 Vesey
90 Namestnikov - 16 Strome - 17 Fast
20 Kreider- 21 Howden - 72 Chytil
42 Smith- 24 Nieves - 48 Lemieux
18 Staal - 77 DeAngelo
76 Skjei - 22 Shattenkirk
43 Hajek - 44 Pionk
40 Georgiev
30 Lundqvist
Quinn broke out the line shuffle yesterday, Lias Andersson, Connor Brickley and Freddy Claesson were the healthy scratches. With those moves, Boo Nieves was re-inserted back into the lineup on the fourth line, joined once again by Brendan Smith and Brendan Lemiuex, who slid down to the fourth line. Chris Kreider dropped down to the third line, skating with Brett Howden and Filip Chytil, while Pavel Buchnevich joined the top line with Mika Zibanejad and Jimmy Vesey.
Quinn was not happy with the effort Tuesday, despite just the 1-0 loss. I am happy he is still on this team to play their best. Not allowing corners to be cut will help down the road, once the team has more talent, especially up front.
“Tonight was disappointing compared to the other one-goal losses,” Quinn said. “I thought we had a lot more in our game that we didn’t show tonight. Too many guys had bad nights.”
“I didn’t love a bunch of guys’ performances tonight,” he said. “A little bit sloppy and not real responsible. … I just thought mentally we were just not very purposeful in what we were trying to accomplish.”
The Rangers, now 27-28-11, lost any shot at coming back midway through the third period while they were on their fourth power play. With 40 seconds left on the man-advantage, Mika Zibanejad was belatedly called for a very questionable at best five-minute major boarding penalty and game misconduct after delivering a hit on Radek Faksa in the corner. add in Brady Skjei's slash shortly thereafter, and Dallas ended up on a power play, blunting any chance New York might have had.
For those looking forward and at the records, which seem to be most of us, five of the next seven games for New York come against Detroit, New Jersey, Edmonton, Vancouver and Detroit again with Calgary and Minnesota mixed in. These games will play a huge role on where the Rangers finish, since it's a battle for the lower part of the standings. Following those seven contests, New York then faces Toronto, Pittsburgh, Boston and St. Louis before closing against Philly, New Jersey, Ottawa, Columbus and Pittsburgh. Settle in, as we will see how many ping pong balls the Blueshirts get.
The funeral for my mother in law will be tomorrow AM followed by the shiva. Will do my best to get blogs up, unsure how frequent or what time that will be. Thanks for carrying the blog in my absence.
New York Rangers Blogger • 
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