A four-game losing streak has plunged the struggling New York Rangers back below .500.
They will try to end their downturn when they return home to host the St. Louis Blues on Monday night at Madison Square Garden — where the Rangers are just 1-7-1 this season.
New York is coming off an 0-3 road trip that ended with a 3-2 loss to the Utah Mammoth on Saturday night in Salt Lake City.
“I thought we got outplayed,” Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said. “I didn’t think for whatever reason we had the juice, the energy. If you don’t bring a certain amount of energy to the game, it’s hard. Today’s game is fast, and that’s a young, fast team.”
The Rangers played without captain J.T. Miller, who sat out due to an upper-body injury. He is listed as day-to-day.
In Miller’s absence, Sullivan reunited the Artemi Panarin-Vincent Trocheck-Alexis Lafreniere line and grouped Jonny Brodzinski with Mika Zibanejad and Will Cuylle.
The top two lines each scored against the Mammoth but, once again, the Rangers didn’t really hit their stride offensively. Utah outshot them 34-22.
“I just feel like we’re disconnected,” Zibanejad said. “I think we’re too far away from each other, and I think it’s a lot of one-and-dones in the O-zone, try to get on the forecheck, it’s one guy, and then we don’t come up with five together.
“I just feel like we’re late everywhere.”
The Blues earned at least a point in seven of their last eight games but went just 3-1-4 in that span. They snapped a four-game winless streak with a 2-1 victory over the New York Islanders on Saturday during the third stop on a five-game road trip.
“It felt great. I think the boys played really hard,” St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery said. “It’s three games in a row in this trip where we could be undefeated, but we haven’t been. But we’ve been resilient. We keep believing, we keep playing the right way. We got rewarded for it.”
The Blues have struggled to hold leads this season, so they were buoyed by their ability to survive a late Islanders goal with an extra attacker on the ice and a subsequent New York power play.
Blues goaltender Jordan Binnington made the game-saving stops during the frantic final minute to keep the game from going into overtime.
“Big kill at the end,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “‘Binner’ made great saves. I thought we were really good defensively all night, and then obviously they got a bounce there on the 6-on-5, but solid team effort and something to build off of.”
With the return of winger Jake Neighbours from injury, the Blues gained some much-needed offensive depth. Slumping veterans Schenn and Pavel Buchnevich played on the second line with Dalibor Dvorsky, and that line scored a goal.
Schenn scored for the first time since Oct. 28 and Buchnevich’s assist was his second point in the last 14 games.
Pius Suter scored a goal playing between Dylan Holloway and Jordan Kyrou, while Robert Thomas centered Neighbours and Jimmy Snuggerud on the top line.
