The New York Rangers will look to return to their winning ways when they continue their road swing against the Calgary Flames on Wednesday.
Although the Rangers are coming off a 3-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Monday, they believe the blueprint will work next time.
The Rangers outshot Edmonton by a 31-20 margin but lacked puck luck. Granted, Edmonton goaltender Devon Levi provided a first-star performance, but the Rangers believe they should have tallied more than once in a game that hung in the balance until a late empty-net tally.
“The score’s disappointing. We don’t want to lose, but I thought we played well,” forward Tye Kartye said. “If we play that way, I think we’re going to have a good result more (often) than not.”
The loss snapped a three-game winning streak, so it is not like the Rangers are in a swoon.
However, there are a couple of causes for concern. New York has won only two of nine road games this season and continued to struggle on the power play, failing to convert on all five chances in Edmonton. They have netted only three man-advantage markers in the last eight games.
Still, as they head into the third outing of a four-game trip that ends in Vancouver on Friday, nobody is stressing too greatly.
“I thought the goals they scored were kind of fluky goals,” captain J.T. Miller said. “I think we outplayed them. I thought we deserved a better fate. … It just wasn’t our night, unfortunately.
“We’re just missing that timely goal.”
The Flames are back in action after a thrilling 4-3 overtime victory over the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday.
In an entertaining affair, Calgary erased a trio of one-goal deficits and was the better team through the third period and overtime before Matt Coronato converted the winner with 52 seconds left in OT, seconds after goalie Devin Cooley made a scintillating save.
“That’s overtime, right?” coach Ryan Huska said. “It’s either one team holds the puck forever and nothing happens, or it trades chances back and forth, so fortunate on our side of things that they didn’t capitalize and we had the right shooter get the puck when we had the opportunity.”
Calgary, which was expected to be a bottom feeder when the season kicked off and lost its first five outings to kick off the campaign, has won six of its last seven home games.
As the Flames prepare to conclude a three-game homestand before heading into a road-heavy schedule in the second half of November, the goal will be to follow a similar gameplan to the one they used against the Flyers.
Having to erase deficits will obviously not be the expectation, but the Flames showed plenty of moxie battling back and using their team speed to take the momentum.
“It was excellent,” Cooley said. “I think the first two periods we probably didn’t play the way that we wanted to, but in the third we were lights out and in overtime we were incredible. It was awesome to see. I barely did anything in (the) third period and they just kind of took it from there and it was great.”