Rangers Preach Positivity After Loss To Hurricanes

A couple of tragic sequences and just bad luck led to the New York Rangers’ demoralizing 4-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes.

Less than one minute into the contest, Andrei Svechnikov scored, putting the Rangers in an early hole.

After a sluggish start, the Rangers were quickly able to find their legs and started to settle back in.

It was in the second period when the Rangers really began to thrive. They generated multiple high-quality scoring chances.

The Blueshirts were flying out there, playing a showtime style of hockey while dominating offensive possession time.

There was only one problem; Frederik Andersen was a brick wall and the Rangers just couldn’t get any bounces to go their way.

The hockey gods were not on the Rangers’ side. That was especially evident toward the end of the second period.

Following a flurry of scoring opportunities from New York, Carolina scored with just over 30 seconds left in the period, destroying any sort of momentum the Rangers may have had.

To start the final frame, the Blueshirts gave up two quick goals in the first few minutes as the energy was just sucked out of the building.

“The part that is really discouraging for me is the start of the third period for me,” Peter Laviolette said. “The start of the third period for me took the energy from us and we never responded well after that.”

The score might be deceiving, but the Rangers players were happy with the effort they put on display through the first 40 minutes of the game.

“Obviously the boys were down about it, Vincent Trocheck said about the loss. “You don’t want to lose games, especially divisional games like this, but I try to keep the spirits up. I think we’ve been playing fantastic hockey this month of January and if we continue to play that way, we are going to have a chance to win every night, so just try to keep everybody's head up.”

In a heated playoff race, the Rangers don’t need moral victories, they need points, so these two consecutive losses certainly set them back in the standings.

The Rangers will be back in action on Saturday afternoon against the Boston Bruins.