Goaltending was a major factor in this season’s first edition of the Battle of the Hudson.
Not for the Rangers, who have consistently had the edge in net in recent years, but for the Devils, who benefitted from a stellar performance from goalie Jakob Markstrom in their first regular-season win — 5-1 — over their tristate rivals since March 30, 2023 on Monday night at Madison Square Garden.
“The will and the want to turn this around, I don’t think any one of us would be here if we didn’t have the attitude, but it still has to translate on the ice,” Mika Zibanejad said after the game. “Just got to be a balance of desperation, but also a cool head, too. … It’s not the best of times, right now, obviously losing a lot of games.
“We still have to battle. We still have to work. We can’t do anything else, there’s no magic to it, we just have to keep working and find a way.”
Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin hasn’t been able to mask the team’s mistakes as effectively as he did at the start of the season.
For weeks that’s been the case, even despite the way Shesterkin kept the Blueshirts competitive in games they had no business being in.
Monday night saw Shesterkin break down himself, however, just like the rest of the team around him has over what is now the first five-game losing streak of his six-year NHL career.
At some point, the backbone is going to cave in amid significant and repeated stress.
By no means does this 1-6 stretch the Rangers have stumbled through fall on Shesterkin’s shoulders, but the 28-year-old has veered from his best self at times as the team has descended into unrest.
Shesterkin was certainly not the superior netminder on the ice Monday night.
That much was apparent as Markstrom, in his first season with the Devils, stopped 39 of the 40 shots he faced compared to the 23 saves Shesterkin made.
The Swedish netminder was the best penalty killer on the ice, denying eight of the Rangers’ nine shots across four power plays.
“We were putting pucks on net,” said Adam Fox, who was on the ice for the Rangers’ lone goal from Chris Kreider on the power play in the second period. “[Markstrom] had a great game, I think. It was a tough start and then obviously the power-play goals for them. We were putting pucks on net. We had good compete, I thought. It was obviously too little too late there in the third also.”
The tone was set in this one after Shesterkin gave up two goals on the Devils’ first four shots of the game.
Continuing to bleed odd-man rush chances, the Rangers found themselves behind less than 90 seconds into the game, when Jesper Bratt took it himself on a 2-on-1 rush for the 1-0 lead.
Allowing early goals has been a concerning trend for the Rangers this season, one that has lingered despite the team’s acknowledgement of it.
The Devils power play scored twice in the second period, while Jack Hughes notched two goals himself — the first at five-on-five and the second with the man advantage.
Hughes stood out on every shift he took in this one, racking up three points and a game-high eight shots on goal.
Twenty-four games into the season, the Rangers have given up five or more goals seven times.
They may have just snapped a five-game losing skid with a win over the lowly Canadiens this past weekend, but a one-goal win over the worst team in the Eastern Conference is hardly a victory to build on.
It’s been over six weeks since the Rangers last beat a top-tier team.
Devils fans in attendance at the Garden on Monday night taunted Shesterkin, the Rangers and Rangers fans after their team went 0-4 in the regular-season series last season.
What a difference less than a year can make.
“We got to win hockey games,” head coach Peter Laviolette said. “We’re a good hockey team. Right now, we’re not playing very good hockey. We need to be better. Those are things that are in our control. Those answers are in the room and those are the answers that we need to figure out as a group.”