The disappointment was palpable in the Rangers locker room Thursday in the aftermath of a 7-1 Battle of the Hudson loss that went from promising to bad to worse to downright embarrassing rather quickly.
“Not proud of that performance,” J.T. Miller said.
It was one of those games that gets away and all of a sudden, “You’re chasing,” Adam Fox said.
But there was also a sense that it was a one-off, that the habits the Blueshirts had built over the past month since training camp began — and over the first eight games of the season — could flush everything that went wrong.
For the worst start of Dylan Garand’s young career to be an anomaly. For the defensive identity of checking and forechecking and closing in the third period to materialize again Saturday night in Columbus. For an offense that had scored at least four goals in five of six wins to start generating chances again consistently.
That turns Saturday night’s match against the Blue Jackets into an early-season litmus test, a gauge of whether they can move on from a crushing loss — like they did after their first two defeats of the young season — or whether this might start to spiral. The loss in New Jersey dropped them to 1-3 away from the Garden, and three of their next four games will be on the road.
“[Thursday] shows what happens when we don’t do it,” Mika Zibanejad said Thursday, “and I feel like we’ve been building that game — and that’s why I think it’s easier to spot the difference and what happens when we don’t play our game and the little details that we have to do within our game.”
At the center of their attempt to erase what happened will be Garand — the starter for the foreseeable future with Joonas Korpisalo on long-term injured reserve and Igor Shesterkin out for the season.
He entered play Thursday with a .951 save percentage and a 1.15 goals against average that generated plenty of praise, but those numbers dropped to .915 and ballooned to 2.05, respectively, after he allowed four goals on 13 shots and got pulled.
In each of his previous two starts since Shesterkin’s right skate jammed into the post and changed the outlook of the Rangers season, Garand, slightly undersized at 6-foot-1, had impressed with his ability to control pucks and play a consistent game.
That’s the formula without Shesterkin. That’s the blueprint. The Rangers can’t force Garand to do too much, instead putting him in a position to produce the necessary saves like they did for most of the opening frame against the Devils until Miller’s brutal turnover led to the first tally.
Thursday was Garand’s first clunker. It marked the only time in eight NHL appearances when he’d allowed more than two goals. It served as the most goals the Rangers had surrendered in a game since allowing six against the Blue Jackets on March 19.
“I know we’re better than this, to a man,” Miller said.
The Rangers are one of 11 teams that haven’t lost consecutive games through the opening two weeks of the season. They collapsed in the third against the Bruins in the opener but responded with a statement against the Lightning two nights later.
They lost last Friday to the Capitals on the night Shesterkin’s season ended, but they avoided an emotional hangover two nights later with a commanding win over the Canucks.
“Ever since [the opener], we’ve played really good Ranger hockey, coming up with some identity for ourselves as a group,” Miller said.
Their worst loss yet will test that resolve. It’ll test the emergence of Garand and whether he can thrive in the crease two nights after his low point.
It’ll test whether Alexis Lafrenière can rebound from a minus-4 night and keep demonstrating that his 11-points-in-nine-games clip is sustainable.
It’ll test whether a deflection goal from Pavel Dorofeyev on the power play Thursday — just his second so far — can start to shift his slow start to the season.
It’ll test whether the Blueshirts, holistically, can move on from the rivalry disaster and their early road woes to showcase another reminder that these aren’t the same Rangers from last year. Another reminder of 2025-26, especially with Shesterkin out, is something they can’t afford.
“We’ve learned a lot about ourselves over the last couple weeks and the last month,” Miller said, “and I think that we have a high-character group in here — so all we can do is learn from [Thursday] and move forward and be ready for the next game and come out firing.”
