Postgame analysis: Shootout loss ends New York Rangers bid for back-to-backs wins

ANAHEIM - The difference between a successful West Coast trip and a solid one was one minute and 46 seconds. 

That's how close the New York Rangers were to getting out of the Honda Center with a win over the Anaheim Ducks on Saturday afternoon, which would have resulted in their third win of the four-game trip. 

Instead, a late goal from Hampus Lindholm forced overtime, with the Ducks coming away with a 4-3 shootout win. 

"It's completely different," Mika Zibanejad said of how the team feels at the end of the trip. "You win the game and you win three out of four here, it's a lot easier to kind of work on things and look at things when you're winning. I think when you lose, you kind of tend to focus on the negatives and what we have to do better to win the games."

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Zibanejad scored multiple goals for the second consecutive game, including the go-ahead score early in the third period. (He was also the only Rangers to convert his opportunity in the shootout.)

It wasn't quite enough to will the Rangers back-to-back wins for the first time since Nov. 25 and 27. They've now traded wins and losses for 10 consecutive games. (Although they technically got a point and finished this four-game swing 2-1-1.)

"It is disappointing," coach David Quinn said. "We had an opportunity to end this on a really positive note. We ended it on disappointing note."

The Rangers (16-12-4) started fast — really fast — with Zibanejad scoring off the faceoff just 10 seconds into the game. 

Less than four minutes later, Artemi Panarin took his turn padding his totals.

Ryan Strome gathered a loose puck on the boards and flicked a backhanded pass to Panarin, who pivoted and beat Ducks goalie John Gibson on the glove side.

It was the team-leading 19th goal of the season — and 42nd point — for the big free-agent prize. 

But as encouraging as the start was for the Rangers, they allowed the Ducks to rally.

Jakob Silfverberg capitalized on a power play 8:53 into the first period by tipping in a slap shot from Lindholm, but the best stretch for Anaheim came in the second period.

They outshot the Rangers 18-3 in the middle 20 minutes, which included the tying goal from Erik Gudbranson. Henrik Lundqvist had chased Adam Henrique too far out of the net, which left it wide open for Gudbranson.

"When I commit to him and he just holds on to it, I have two choices," Lundqvist said. "I let him go and he’ll probably go around the net, so I have to attack him. And when he puts it in the middle, I’m obviously way out of position."

Key moment(s)

The Blueshirts didn't let a lackluster second period carry over into the third. 

Just 1:14 in, Zibanejad took a pass from Tony DeAngelo at the blue line and went straight toward Gibson, sneaking the puck by on the inside post to give the Rangers the lead back at 3-2.

Zibanejad entered the road trip with one goal in his previous five games, but he netted five goals over the course of the four-game trip.

"You're talking about arguably our best all-around player," Quinn said Friday. "Mika's hard on himself. He hasn't been really happy with the way he's played since he's been back, but he's done a lot of good things. ... This guy is a true No. 1 center."

Unfortunately for the Rangers, what looked like a decisive goal from Zibanejad didn't quite hold up. 

Brady Skjei took a tripping penalty with 3:11 left in regulation, and toward the end of the power play, Lindholm beat Lundqvist with a slap shot from the point to tie it at 3-3 and force overtime. 

"It was more the screen and it became a reaction shot," Lundqvist said. "Most shots you read, but it became a reaction shot and I was just too slow to pick it up."

The Rangers had a few chances in overtime — including a close-range attempt from Zibanejad that would have sealed a hat trick — but the Ducks prevailed in the shootout, 2-1. 

Caught my eye

Quinn has shown a tendency to rely heavily on his top three lines, but that trend has been changing of late.

His usage of all four lines was more even compared to earlier in the season, with every forward playing at least 11 minutes. (Chris Kreider started on the top line and actually finished with the lowest total at 11:04, with Quinn saying he's not hurt.)

The lines looked more balanced, too. The third line of Greg McKegg, Filip Chytil and Jesper Fast remained intact for the second straight game, while Brendan Lemieux returned from his one game absence with an upper-body injury to join the fourth line with Brett Howden and Brendan Smith.

Neither of the bottom-two lines scored, but both had strong shifts in terms of offensive possession and neither line had a player finish with a negative plus-minus rating. 

"We look a little bit deeper with those four lines," Quinn said. "Being the fourth game on the road in a four-game road trip, the third period, I really wanted to play four lines. That was part of the decision-making process. I thought all those lines were effective."

More takeaways from Vin

• This is a perfect of example how fine the line can be between “things are great” and “the sky is falling” in sports. If the Rangers get an extra goal on one of their chances in the third period, or if Lundqvist is able to squeeze the shot from Lindholm, or if they scored in OT, or won in the shootout… things would be rosy. Instead, they came up painfully short, and the locker room felt somewhat dejected (as do the fans). Of course, there are plenty of areas where they can improve — we covered those earlier in the trip — and as far as the players go, it’s probably a good thing that they take these losses hard. They’re starting to expect more out of themselves. “We’ve shown that we're capable of playing good hockey — it’s just sticking to it,” Zibanejad said. “Sometimes it is boring, but it's going to pay off in the long run and that's what we have to stick to. … It would have been a great road trip.”
• The guy who seemed most disappointed was Lundqvist. He was more upset at himself for the third goal at the end of regulation than the one where he was caught out of position in the second period. It seems to be weighing on him that he hasn't been a part of a win since Nov. 27, with Alexandar Georgiev picking up both wins on this trip. "Right now we’re playing good hockey, putting ourselves in a spot where we can get the two points," he said. "Personally, I want to be part of it and try to help get wins. It just hasn’t bounced my way the last week or so. I feel like I’m doing good things, and I try to control what I can control."

• The easy reaction that some vocal fans are having is to pin this (shootout) loss solely on Lundqvist. The second and third goals were saves he could have made — or been in better position to make — which he was kicking himself for. It wasn't his best game, but anyone trying to spin it as a bad performance is kidding themselves. (Probably because fans fall in love with young players, like Georgiev and Igor Shesterkin, while magnifying mistakes from veterans.) Did you miss the other 39 saves he made? Or the way he stopped 17 of 18 shots during a poorly-played second period? Georgiev has certainly earned more time (although he only stopped 15 of the 18 shots he faced Thursday in San Jose), and I'm anxious to see Shesterkin in an NHL game. But don't twist the narrative. Goaltending has been the strength of this team through the first 32 games, and Lundqvist has been a big part of that. This wasn't a performance that warrants a benching, by any stretch.
• Here's how Quinn evaluated Lundqvist. "Listen, he made some big saves for us," he said. "Knowing him the way I do, I know he probably wants to make one more save. He wants to get in a rhythm — we want to get him in a rhythm — and again, he made some big saves when we needed it. … I just wish we were able to play better in front of him in that second period."
• Quinn was critical of the penalty kill, which has been better lately but gave up two goals Saturday. During one stretch in the second period, the Rangers took three penalties in a span of 2:32. And the Skjei penalty at the end of regulation led to the tying goal. "Special teams was the deciding factor," Quinn said. "We didn't finish killing the first one, and then we just kind of made a bad read on the initial rush. We've done a really good job killing that penalty, and we've talked about on the initial rush — absorbing the rush instead of jumping forward. If you're going to move forward, you better get the body or the puck and we got neither. It just kind of a tough shot — a little bit of a screen. … Unfortunately when we struggle on the PK, it seems to come in bunches within a game."
• I'm heading out to catch the red-eye flight back to New York after a week on the West Coast. It's been fun, but I'm ready to go home. The Rangers kept it interesting, picking up five of a possible eight points. "We were ready to play," Quinn said. "We wanted six points. We really did. I guess taking five isn’t a bad trip. You always think about going .500, but you can’t do what everyone else is doing if you want to do something special. We almost got the sixth."

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Twitter: @vzmercogliano