The New York Rangers got blown out 6-1 at Madison Square Garden by the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday night.
Going into this matchup, the Rangers hadn’t played until Sunday afternoon, and the rust clearly showed.
The Sabres set the tone by scoring less than 30 seconds into the contest.
From the start, the Rangers played a sluggish game and just didn’t come in with any sense of urgency.
The real trouble came in the second period when the Sabres scored three goals in a two-minute span.
This caused Peter Laviolette to pull Igor Shesterkin, who gave up five goals on just 12 total shots.
Through the start of the season, the Rangers have been relying on Shesterkin to be superman and it finally caught up to them.
“We’ve been under siege a little bit too much, we’ve been relying on our goaltender too much,” Laviolette said.
It was just a bad performance from the Rangers and there is no other way to put it.
It’s a game that they just were not themselves and players in the locker room were well aware of that fact.
“As a group tonight, we definitely weren’t good enough.” Jacob Trouba said. “We will go back and watch it, learn from lessons from it and move forward.
The Rangers will travel to Detroit to take on the Red Wings on Saturday night.