OTTAWA — The Rangers’ first trip to Canada this season was a humbling one.
After suffering a 5-4 loss in a track meet against the Maple Leafs earlier this week, the Blueshirts chased all game once again in a 7-4 loss to the Senators on Saturday night to fall to 1-5-1 on the road to start the 2026-27 season.
Despite managing to cut what ballooned to a three-goal deficit to one by the third period and again later in the final frame, the Rangers never found the equalizer.
The strong starts to games have quickly dissipated lately, leaving the Rangers frantically trying to make up for early mistakes for the rest of the contest. It has certainly factored into the team dropping four of their last five games, during which they have given up at least five goals three times.
“[Us being in these games is] a good sign, I guess, but we want to win,” captain J.T. Miller said after posting a goal and an assist in the loss. “We don’t want to just be in these games. We’re doing a lot of good, I just feel like sometimes we’re hurting ourselves a little bit because even the Toronto game, we had a lot of scoring chances also in that game. Really like the fight at the end. We were that close to tying it. Goofy bounce for them at the end of that power play.
“It’s funny how the game works. … Once we got our legs under us halfway through the first period I thought we played a good game. We [have] got to learn a lesson from that.”
At times, it felt as if last year’s Rangers somehow showed up and took the ice at the Canadian Tire Centre.
The real inverse of the two seasons has been their success at home and their struggles on the road, but some of the damning habits that plagued the Rangers last season are proving to still be present.
It was one of the Rangers’ worst first periods of the 2026-27 campaign thus far, if not the worst.
Trailing by two going into the first intermission for the first time this season, the Rangers also didn’t register their first shot on goal until they were on the power play just under halfway through the opening period.
The visitors already were down 1-0 at that point after Jake Sanderson found Drake Batherson for a shot that beat Dylan Garand blocker side.
On the Rangers’ first power play of the game, however, Pavel Dorofeyev retaliated to getting repeatedly cross-checked in the back by Ridly Greig but was the only one penalized for high-sticking. It negated their man advantage and allowed the Senators to continue hemming the Rangers in their zone.
Miller later made an errant pass that Braden Schneider fumbled at the blue line to send the Senators the other way. Fabian Zetterlund fed Tim Stützle off the rush to put the Rangers behind by two just 6:40 into the game.
“I would’ve liked to have hoped that we were ready from the drop of the puck,” head coach Mike Sullivan said. “[The Senators] were coming off a loss, they’re in their home building. They’re going to try to respond. As we were trying to do the same thing because we weren’t overly excited about our overall team effort in our last game. Give them credit. They started well. They played well early on, but I think the positive takeaway is just our compete level and our fight to get back in the game.”
The Rangers struggled mightily with clearing the puck and breaking it out of their zone, which led to Batherson’s second of the game less than two minutes into the second period.
Sullivan then began shuffling his lines a bit. Replacing Dorofeyev with Oliver Bjorkstrand on the second line, Sullivan finally started getting a bit more out of his top six, especially once the third period began.
Will Cuylle managed to get the Rangers on the board with a short-handed goal later in the frame, but Batherson’s backhanded pass from the corner went in off Dylan Cozens in front and regained the three-goal lead for the Senators shortly after.
Ultimately holding a slight edge in shots on goal through the middle frame, the Rangers scored twice more to make it a one-goal game heading into second intermission.
Miller batted in his third goal of the season off an Adam Fox feed before the Rangers captain fed Alexis Lafrenière off the rush during 4-on-4 play at the tail end of the second period.
Despite spending a good portion of the final 20 minutes in the Senators zone, Sanderson was the only player to break through in the third period. After Garand made the initial save on Greig, Sanderson swooped in and backhanded the rebound in for his first goal of the season.
“The first two goals he had no chance on,” Sullivan said of Garand’s seventh consecutive start. “The game-winner is a 2-on-1 that’s a rebound. He makes the initial save. I try to look at it objectively and say, ‘Hey, is he giving us a chance to win? Is he making the saves he’s supposed to make?’ I thought Dylan made a lot of good saves for us tonight. We’ve got to do a better job in front of him making sure that we cut down on some of the quality of the chances that we’re giving up by having more discipline in positional play.”
