The Rangers have no more dress rehearsals after a 3-1 loss to the Boston Bruins Thursday night at Madison Square Garden in the Blueshirts’ final preseason match before the regular season begins.
So there are no more free looks against outside competition. Next up is a trip to Buffalo, where the Rangers open up Oct. 12 against the Sabres. The rest of their on-ice evaluations will have to come in the practices they have before then.
For whatever it’s worth, the Rangers finished their preseason schedule with a 1-5 record.
Here are the takeaways from Thursday:
-The teams entered the third period with the score tied at 1, but the Bruins quickly took the lead. Just 1:13 into the period, the Rangers left Matthew Poitras alone in front of Igor Shesterkin with the puck behind the net. He collected a pass from Trent Frederic and put the puck in the net for a 2-1 Boston lead. Sheskterin, who played the whole game, stopped 12-of-14 shots and stopped 42-of-46 in the pre-season. AJ Greer added an empty-net goal with 21.1 seconds remaining.
-The Rangers had two late power plays, but couldn’t get the equalizer. With 5:39 left in the third period, Coyle was sent off for cross-checking Kaapo Kakko, but the Bruins killed the chance. With 3:04 remaining, the Rangers got another power play and even pulled Shesterkin to have a six-on-four advantage for a long stretch, but the Bruins escaped.
-The Rangers started the game with Mika Zibanejad centering a line with Chris Kreider and Kakko, part of Laviolette’s desire to get looks at different line combinations. With 9:46 left in the first, Kakko scored his second goal of the pre-season, a wrist shot from about 25 feet out in front of the net, after receiving a crisp pass from Kreider. Kakko’s shot beat Boston goalie Jeremy Swayman on the glove side. In fairness, Swayman may have been screened by his own man, defenseman Ian Mitchell. Kakko created several scoring chances over the course of the night.
-The Rangers could have added to their early lead because they dominated the shots in the period, 7-1. With about three minutes left in the first and the Rangers on a power play, Artemi Panarin hit the post and the puck then trickled along the goal line, but not over it. Swayman smothered it to squelch the threat.
-In the second period, the Bruins tied the score at 1 on a power-play goal by Charlie Coyle, his first of the pre-season. Pavel Zacha took a shot that Igor Shesterkin turned away, but the rebound went to David Pastrnak on Shesterkin’s right. Pastrnak slid the puck to Coyle in front of the net and Coyle knocked it in.
-The Rangers had a golden power-play chance of their own in the period when Jimmy Vesey and Coyle got into a disagreement of sorts in the corner. At one point, Coyle was elbowing Vesey in the head. There was a delayed penalty on the Bruins and the Rangers were setting up their attack as Shesterkin left for an extra skater. But Coyle and Vesey dropped their gloves, though their tussle fizzled quickly. Coyle was given four minutes for roughing and two for cross-checking while Vesey got whistled for two minutes for roughing. The Rangers had a four-minute man advantage, but couldn’t do any damage, even though one shot hit the crossbar and Zibanejad had a close-in one-timer from Swayman’s right that the goalie stopped with his right pad.
-The combinations and lines the Rangers deployed Thursday may show “pieces” of what fans might see on opening night, Laviolette said before the game. “We’re still looking at different things,” the coach noted. He added that the team will have several practices before they play for real, so there’s time to tweak pairings. “We’ll continue to look at it,” Laviolette said.
-Before the game, Laviolette also said that he thought Wednesday’s loss to the Devils was the best the Rangers had played defensively in the preseason. He was waiting for the Rangers to “step on the gas offensively,” however.
