Some people are afraid of spiders. Some are afraid of the dark. For the Carolina Hurricanes, it seems that their boogeyman is the New York Rangers.
After a disappointing 5-2 loss Friday night at PNC Arena, the Rangers completed the season series sweep, 4-0-0.
When asked if there’s a different feel against New York, head coach Rod Brind’Amour responded that the team “Doesn’t think about that,” and that, “Guys don’t remember their last game, let alone the history of games.”
The Canes are now 5-20-0 in their last 25 meetings against the Rangers and despite what Brind’Amour may say, it seems the team’s mentality shifts when the Blueshirts come up on the schedule.
“For whatever reason the Rangers have played well against us,” said captain Jordan Staal. “We just have to find ways to get points right now and whatever team we’re playing against we have to be better.”
While the Canes have had closer matches this year, this one proved to be the worst loss.
“It’s just another game,” said Brock McGinn. “We have to come out and execute our style of play and we lacked that in little spurts of the game and it cost us.”
The Rangers dominated nearly every face of the game: leading shots 36-29, hits 23-16, blocked shots 24-8, giveaways 9-19 and ultimately goals 5-2.
In fact one of those blocked shots led to the Rangers’ first goal late in the opening period as noted Canes-bane, Mika Zibanejad, sprung himself with a breakaway after getting in the way of a Staal point shot. In alone, he froze Mrazek with a head fake and finished on the backhand to give New York the lead.
While the tables seemed to steady with McGinn tying the game on a top-corner rifle early in the second, it didn’t last.
Somehow, it seems to be destined that Carolina must lose to the Rangers and that was proven as a pair of bad luck deflection goals against one of the Hurricanes’ most solid defensive pairings pushed the game out of reach.
The first was a broken play where the Rangers found themselves with a 3-on-1 opportunity off a Carolina turnover in the defensive zone and as Jasper Fast tried to pass the puck back across to Artemi Panarin, it hit Brett Pesce’s skate and slowly wobbled over the goalline.
It didn’t help that Mrazek was too far out of position challenging Fast because even if the puck hadn’t hit Pesce’s skate, it would have been an easy shot for anyone to make, but it’s still the principal.
The second was an even more “come on” moment than the first. New York defenseman Brady Skjei activated from the blueline and skated the puck around the back of the net. As he tried to turn though, he fell but managed to sling the puck up to the crease where it ricocheted off Jake Gardiner’s skate and up over Mrazek’s shoulder.
“We got our bad bounces because [the Rangers] were working for them,” Staal said. “Tonight we had to be more desperate and we weren’t. That’s frustrating at this time of year. It just wasn’t there.”
The Rangers extended the lead early in the third to three as Panarin notched a power play tally after a broken play ended with the puck on his blade and alone facing Mrazek.
Sebastian Aho tried to bring some life back to the building, extending his point streak to 11-games, as a one-timer by Andrei Svechnikov, whose point streak extended to nine games, squeezed through rookie netminder Igor Shesterkin to the goalline for the easy tap-in, but it was a case of too little too late.
New York picked up an empty-netter near the tail end of the game to cap off the season series sweep of the Canes.
With another game less than 24-hours away, the Hurricanes will need to shake off the tough loss as it heads up north to face the Toronto Maple Leafs at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
“It was a tough loss,” McGinn said. “We need to come out with a better game, but we got to look forward to tomorrow. This one’s going to sting, but we have a game tomorrow that we need to focus on.”
Rangers center Ryan Strome celebrates after scoring an empty net goal versus the Hurricanes on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020 at PNC Arena. Strome had one goal and one assist in the 5-2 win over Carolina.
