Only time will tell what kind of impact Patrick Kane can make on the Rangers, but the clock started Thursday night.
In the meantime, one of the NHL’s most loaded forward groups on paper jumped onto the ice at Madison Square Garden.
The Rangers unveiled a top-12 that features a unique combination of high-end skill and grit, youth and veterans and a few of the biggest names in the sport sprinkled throughout.
With less than 24 hours until the trade deadline, this is likely it for the Rangers.
The 5-3 loss to the Senators may have put a damper on Kane’s debut as a Blueshirt, but it also cast a minor cloud over the Rangers’ Walking on Sunshine aura that the club had exuded for weeks.
There’s no question the team is exhausted after playing shorthanded for the second straight game, which was a result of the NHL deciding the Rangers “voluntarily” put themselves in a man-short situation and therefore opted not to approve their emergency recall.
Without Ryan Lindgren (upper-body injury) and K’Andre Miller (serving the second of a three-game suspension), the defense corps was visibly gassed.
Plus, the Rangers lost Tyler Motte in the first period to an upper-body injury.
But Ottawa scored two unanswered goals in the third period. It was almost three, but the Rangers challenged for offside and won. That left them 14:24 to net the equalizer. It never came.
For a team that is now composed of some of the most elite goal scorers in the league, the Rangers are going to have to go goal-for-goal with their opponents on a game-by-game basis.
This is their genetic makeup. Just because it didn’t happen the first night this star-studded lineup skated together, doesn’t mean it won’t.
“When you play a game of hockey for 60 minutes, you got to do more stuff than just make the real nice passes,” head coach Gerard Gallant said after the loss. “We’ve got to reset some pucks, we got to get better forechecking, more pressure. There was good chemistry and they made some really nice plays, but our team has got to be better than that.”
After Chris Kreider opened the scoring in the first period with a shorthanded breakaway goal, the Senators scored twice in the span of 21 seconds in the middle frame to take a 2-1 lead halfway through the game.
That’s the thing about this Rangers team. The defensive lapses can be costly in a hurry, but with the way these forward lines are arranged, it takes just as little time to make up for it.
Artemi Panarin fed Jacob Trouba, who was cutting to Ottawa’s net, before the Rangers captain banked a backhander off Senators defenseman Thomas Chabot to knot the game at 2-2 at 12:15 of the second.
The Rangers’ five-on-five offense continued to show promise when Mika Zibanejad sent a leading pass up to Vladimir Tarasenko on the blue line.
Splitting Ottawa’s two defenders, Tarasenko took the puck in and pulled out Peter Forsberg’s trademarked move by sliding it in with one hand to give the Rangers a 3-2 lead.
Just imagine what the Rangers could do to a scoreboard if they can get their power play clicking on all cylinders.
Speaking of …
The Rangers had four opportunities to try out their new power-play units, including a five-minute man-advantage in the first period. Kane stepped right into the top group along with Adam Fox, Panarin, Zibanejad and Kreider, while the second unit featured Trouba, Vincent Trocheck, Kaapo Kakko, Tarasenko and Filip Chytil. Alexis Lafreniere got the bump, but neither unit gave a stellar first impression.
Even on the five-minute power play at the end of the opening frame, when Motte was crunched into the boards on a high hit from Austin Watson, the Rangers couldn’t capitalize.
Motte, who caught an elbow from Watson as the Senators forward left his feet, went straight to the locker room and didn’t return.
“I thought the power play obviously hurt us,” Gallant said. “Just trying to be too pretty and too many passes. There’s good skill, there’s good talent and they had some good plays, but the bottom line is, you got to put the puck in the net.”
There is ample time for the Rangers to find their offensive groove.
It’s only Game 1 of at least 21 for Kane in a Rangers jersey. They have until the playoffs to unlock it.
