New York Rangers Rough Starts Hurting Them

Once again in last night’s 3-2 loss to the Phoenix coyotes at Jobing.com Arena, the New York Rangers found themselves in the box within the first five minutes, taking away from any momentum they had going in.

Several minutes later, they found themselves down a goal thanks to a defensive mistake along the boards, and for the fifth straight time, got off to a rough start. It is sort of one of those things that is difficult to come up with an explanation for, but it is a problem the Blueshirts have been suffering from the entire season.

I believe a lot of this has to do with mental preparation. I will be honest here and say that I have no clue as to how the team prepares in the locker room before a game, or what is said by the players, but obviously they are going wrong somewhere.

It seems like the Rangers are constantly getting pinned in their own zone right off the opening faceoff, forcing goaltender Henrik Lundqvist to be sharp early on. However, that duty was left in the hands of Chad Johnson on Saturday and the result is not what you would have gotten from Lundqvist.

The defense is never alert to begin the game, either. It takes them a lengthy amount of time until they find their legs, which means their pregame routine needs to change. There is no excuse to be sluggish at the beginning of a game when all you have done all day is sleep, eat, and skate in the warm-up. A professional athlete should have their body trained a bit better than that.

The defense is not the only area of this team that is to blame, though. The offense very rarely can establish a forecheck early on. Take last night for example; New York had just ten shots on goal at the midway point of the game, which is crystal clear proof of their offensive struggles.

It took them until 10 minutes remaining in the third period to actually apply pressure to the Phoenix defense and look, they scored two goals back-to-back. Well, what do you know?

Like I said, a lot of this has to do with off-ice preparation and however this team gets themselves mentally ready in the locker room needs an adjustment. Save for Henrik Lundqvist, Ryan Callahan, and maybe even Sean Avery, who always hit the ice focused and on a mission.

Maybe if these three can distribute some of their hyped up energy to the rest of this team, they would be much better, because that trio sometimes is the only players in the lineup that are doing much of anything.

I will have Rangers-Avalanche Pregame up on the site later. In the meantime, I shall wait and see what comes of all these talks about the Leafs striking several deals to bolster up their defense and goaltending. Yeah, and Glen Sather says it is so hard to make trades to better your team. Yeah, right.

Also keep tabs on twitter.com/RangersTribune for the starting goalie announcement for the Rangers tonight.