Mistakes Prove Costly for Rangers in Game 2 at LinesMaker

Mistakes Prove Costly for Rangers in Game 2

NEW YORK (NHL/Lozo) — When the Rangers lose, it rarely has any­thing to do with a bevy of gaffes. The team rose to the top of the East­ern Con­fer­ence this sea­son on the strength of play­ing mistake-free hockey, “the right way,” as coach John Tor­torella calls it.

On Mon­day night at Madi­son Square Gar­den, the Wash­ing­ton Cap­i­tals made the Rangers pay for doing things the wrong way.

The seventh-seeded Caps won Game 2 of their East­ern Con­fer­ence Semi­fi­nal series with the Rangers 3–2, scor­ing all three goals directly off unchar­ac­ter­is­tic errors, evening the best-of-seven series at 1–1.

“Can’t give things for free,” Tor­torella said. “We gave away too many things for free tonight.”

The Rangers were a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion on the Cap­i­tals’ first two goals, which came within five min­utes of each other dur­ing the first period.

Defense­man Stu Bickel fum­bled a puck at the attack­ing blue line and com­pounded the prob­lem by mak­ing a cross-ice pass directly onto the tape of Caps for­ward Joel Ward. It resulted in a 3-on-2 rush that ended with Mike Knuble’s goal that made it 1–0 at 12:20.

Rangers goal­tender Hen­rik Lundqvist is a final­ist for the Vez­ina Tro­phy, but he’s never been known for his stick­han­dling acu­men. He rarely gets him­self in trou­ble when he leaves his net to play the puck, but an error in judg­ment led directly to Jason Chimera’s goal.

For­ward Matt Hen­dricks slid the puck into the zone along the right-wing wall. Lundqvist went behind the net, but the puck slowed and fell short of the trape­zoid. Chimera got to the puck first and played it into the crease, cre­at­ing a wild scram­ble that ended with Chimera bank­ing the puck off the skate of Rangers defense­man Ryan McDon­agh to make it 2–0.

“It just died in the cor­ner,” Lundqvist said. “Then I was just on the line and he stopped it. Then it was just a big scram­ble. It’s just a bad break.”

“The first two goals were us beat­ing our­selves,” Rangers for­ward Brad Richards said. “Whether it’s a fluke or giv­ing an odd-man rush like that, that’s the game of mis­takes we always talk about. We kept it close in the third. We just can’t take two penalties.”

Goals by Richards and Ryan Calla­han over the sec­ond and third peri­ods drew the Rangers into a 2–2 tie. The Rangers dodged a bul­let when Brian Boyle was called for hold­ing the stick, but they couldn’t kill a sec­ond straight power play when Richards was called for hold­ing defense­man John Carlson.

Alex Ovechkin scored the win­ner off the ensu­ing face­off with 7:27 remain­ing in regulation.

“I had my ice, the guy came in front of me, I have to keep my hands down,” Richards said. “It was more of a reac­tionary thing. I can’t take them. We just killed a big one, so we can’t take another one.”

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