It’s almost time to turn the lights off on this already dark Rangers season.
An 8-5 loss to the Flyers Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden pushed the Blueshirts to the brink of elimination, which could become official as soon as Thursday night on Long Island if they lose the second game of this back-to-back slate against the Islanders.
“We haven’t really helped ourselves, let’s be honest,” said Mika Zibanejad, who led all skaters with four assists for his first four-point effort since the 2022-23 season. “We haven’t really helped ourselves over the last couple weeks. We’ve been getting some chances and I felt a couple weeks ago like it was in our hands still to take care of the games that we had.
“But we weren’t able to do that and that’s why we’re in this position. We’re not in this position solely because of tonight. It stings. It’s frustrating.”
It was the visitors who got the better of a back-and-forth third period, in which nine total goals were scored between the two teams.
Philadelphia, already eliminated from playoff contention to match its longest postseason drought of five seasons, managed to find the back of the net six times (two empty-netters) in comparison to the Rangers’ three.
Head coach Peter Laviolette took issue with the way his team “attacked” the final frame, noting that it was anybody’s game for the taking and the Flyers played a better 20 minutes than the Rangers did.
The second-year Rangers coach didn’t want to classify the recurring mistakes as confusion within the system, but instead described them as missed assignments.
“The frustration, the disappointment level has been there,” Laviolette said. “So, we’re still there.”
The Rangers led only once in the third period and it lasted for only a minute before the Flyers tied it up again.
Goals from Jonny Brodzinski and J.T. Miller made it a 4-3 game, but Philadelphia rattled off three straight from Jakob Pelletier, Sean Couturier and Tyson Foerster (game-winner) to take a two-goal lead.
Chris Kreider cut it back to a one-goal deficit with 1:50 left in regulation, but two empty-netters from Foerster and Owen Tippett cleared out the fans who were remaining in the lower bowl of MSG.
The empty-net goal from Foerster completed the hat trick for the 23-year-old wing.
It was a chaotic final 20 minutes of regulation that saw the Rangers zone become the free-for-all it’s been so many times this season.
The Rangers did strike first while skating shorthanded because of a too-many-men-on-the-ice call in the first period. Zibanejad pushed the puck up to Vincent Trocheck, who faked the shot before roofing a backhander past Flyers goalie Aleksei Kolosov for the 1-0 lead.
Philadelphia ended up taking their first lead on a shorthanded goal, too. Garnet Hathaway made it a 2-1 game at the 16:43 mark of the second period, with the Rangers having given up four shorthanded goals in their past six games.
Artemi Panarin, however, answered right back for the Rangers less than two minutes later.
Stitched up after taking a puck to the face shortly before, Panarin zeroed in before backhanding his 300th career goal past Kolosov to make it 2-2.
The teams just continued to trade goals from there, but the Flyers ultimately came out on top.
“It’s a sh-tty feeling in here, for sure,” Adam Fox said. “We’re hanging on by a thread at this point. We’ll show up [Thursday night] and try to win a game. That’s pretty much all we can do right now is try and just turn the page to that.”
