RANGERS at GOLDEN KNIGHTS, 10 p.m.
MSG+, 1050 AM
With his Rangers looking to break out of their three-game skid, David Quinn made clear exactly where his focus lies: "The next day, and the next practice, and the next game. That's what we have to do."
"Everybody holds some sort of responsibility. That's something we've touched on," the bench boss said after his Blueshirts practiced in Las Vegas on Monday. "We've had some stretches like this where we've collected ourselves and stopped it - nothing maybe of this magnitude, with the scores, but we've gone through some tough stretches where we've responded.
"I fully anticipate us to respond tomorrow night. I really do."
That next game for the Rangers comes on Tuesday night on the Strip, closing out the season series with the Vegas Golden Knights, whose six wins in their last six games vaulted them into a tie with Calgary atop the Western Conference standings entering Monday night's games. Tuesday's game begins a stretch of four in six nights for the Blueshirts, all against teams that have heated up in the New Year: after visiting the defending Western Conference champs (winners of six straight), the Rangers return to the Garden to begin a home-and-home series with the Islanders (also winners of six straight) before heading out to Columbus (winners of seven of nine).
But the focus, as the head coach said, is on the next game, and for that one, the Rangers will have Alexandar Georgiev back in nets to take his second start of this three-game road trip. While the stat line from his last one may not look appealing to any goalie, it doesn't tell the story of how strongly the rookie played on Friday night in withstanding more than 14 minutes of Colorado power-play time over the first 28 minutes of the game. At the end of those 28 minutes, Georgiev had held the score at 2-0; he had 30 saves by second intermission and finished his night with a season-high 41.
What the Rangers will not have on Tuesday night, though, is Kevin Hayes, who will wind up missing all three games on the road trip with a nagging upper-body injury. Quinn had said on Sunday that "really it all depends on how he feels when he wakes up," but Hayes didn't feel good enough to join his team on the ice on Monday and will be a no-go against the Golden Knights.
Minus Hayes, the Rangers held a brief practice at T-Mobile Arena that mostly "was just to work on the mentality, get a sweat for 35 minutes, and work on our morale," Quinn said. "It wasn't too taxing, it was more of a get out here and play a little hockey, and get back in the locker room together and start building on our mentality and our togetherness for tomorrow night."
Both the coach and his players have noticed that morale quaver when the Rangers get behind in recent games. Opponents have scored the opening goal in four straight matches; prior to this three-game skid, however, the Blueshirts were 8-8-1 when the opponent scored first, among the top five records in the league.
In their last road game before this trip, the Rangers fell behind in St. Louis on Ryan O'Reilly's first-period goal, but Mats Zuccarello and Boo Nieves grabbed the next two and Henrik Lundqvist saw home a 2-1 win that completed a sweep of the trip through St. Louis and Nashville.
That's one reason Quinn said on Monday that "we're all frustrated with what's transpired over the last three games," adding: "With that being said, it was less than a week ago we came back from winning two games on the road. … One of the things we have to do a better job of is, when things are going bad, we need to stop it. We might go down 1-0 (Tuesday) night - what are you gonna do about it? Right now we're in this feel-sorry mode, and we can't let that creep in. We've got to work on our mentality and we've got to create a better mindset for (Tuesday) night."
"That's the way the season goes - there are going to be times that pucks are going in, when you're capitalizing on your scoring chances, and there are going to be times when they're not going in. But you can't change your game, you can't get away from the way you know you have to play to be successful," said Chris Kreider, the Rangers' leader with 20 goals. "It's something we talked about earlier in the year: It's hard to win on the road in this league. The good teams that do it, they dumb it down, they play simple."
The Golden Knights' recent surge comes in spite of a dry spell out of their top line: Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson and Reilly Smith have combined for three points - one each - during the team's six-game winning streak. (Smith was injured against the Devils and is a question mark for Tuesday.) Alex Tuch, meanwhile, has points in all six of those games to take over the team lead with 33 points, and first-year Knight Max Pacioretty is coming off quite a weekend: He scored the game-winning goals on Friday and Sunday while welcoming his fourth son into the world on Saturday.
Vegas has points in the last 11 games Marc-Andre Fleury has started (8-0-3), and the 34-year-old has started plenty this season: his 24 wins and 38 starts in his team's first 45 games both lead the NHL. Fleury is the only goaltender to have topped 2,000 minutes this season, and by a wide margin: he's at 2,257:40.
LINEUP LAST TIME OUT
20 Kreider - 93 Namestnikov - 17 Fast
36 Zuccarello - 72 Chytil - 16 Strome
90 Namestnikov - 21 Howden - 89 Buchnevich
8 McLeod - 24 Nieves - 26 Vesey
18 Staal - 44 Pionk
76 Skjei - 54 McQuaid
42 Smith - 22 Shattenkirk
40 Georgiev*
30 Lundqvist
*will start Tuesday
NUMBERS GAME
Alexandar Georgiev is 3-0-0 with a 1.44 goals-against average and .944 save percentage in his career against Pacific Division teams. Tuesday's will be 20th career start and first against the Golden Knights; Marc-Andre Fleury has played 60 games against the Rangers alone, his most against any team (32-18-9 record, 2.73 GAA, .909 save pct.).
Vegas has outscored opponents 47-32 in third periods this season, including 8-0 during their six-game winning streak. Malcolm Subban made 20 of his 38 saves in the third period of Sunday's win over New Jersey.
The Golden Knights' six-game winning streak is the second-longest in franchise history, which is a season and a half long. The longest is an eight-game run last season from Dec. 14-Jan. 2.
Jimmy Vesey will play in his 200th NHL game, all with the Rangers.
The Rangers are 5-0-0 on Tuesdays.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Blueshirts leading scorer Mika Zibanejad has goals in all three games the Rangers have played in their short history against Vegas, including a power-play strike in their meeting at the Garden on Dec. 16. He has five points overall against the Golden Knights (3-2-5).
Brandon Pirri, who played 60 games as a Ranger in 2016-17, was recalled to the Golden Knights from AHL Chicago on Monday when William Carrier was placed on injured reserve with an illness. Pirri has six goals and nine points in seven games with Vegas this season; he leads the AHL in scoring with 42 points in 29 games.
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