Diseases have been cured.
Animals have been cloned.
Men have walked on the moon.
But who will live to see the Rangers win another game at Madison Square Garden?
More than one month since being shut out by the Penguins on opening night on Broadway, the Rangers are still searching for their first home win of the season, having extended their incomprehensible Garden skid to seven games (0-6-1) — clinching the franchise’s all-time worst season-opening winless streak — in Saturday night’s 5-0 loss the Islanders, which also ended a five-game win streak against their rival.
After becoming the first team in NHL history to be held without a goal in its first three home games, the Rangers are now the first team in 98 years to be shut out in five of their first seven home games.
“I feel like we’re pressing, we’re getting away from our game, we’re gripping onto our sticks a little bit too much,” Mika Zibanejad said. “We’re professionals, we get paid, we’re supposed to be able to handle it, but we’re in it. We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We just got to find a way.
“You want to build a feeling for teams coming in here that it’s going to be tough.”
It borders on unfathomable.
It would be embarrassing under any circumstances.
But it is made incalculably more surreal by the Rangers’ league-best road success (7-1-1).
The Blueshirts were less than 24 hours removed from a convincing win at second-place Detroit, marking their fourth win in five games.
Because of that, the Garden crowd brought a clean slate to their seats, their early cheers imbued with optimism.
The tension could have been released in the opening seconds, when Artemi Panarin nearly punched in the rebound of a Zibanejad slap shot.
And again approaching the midway point of the first period, when Zibanejad unleashed a wrister that bounced off the crossbar.
The crowd remained supportive, recognizing how close the Rangers were to breaking through.
Then, Will Cuylle was stoned in front, and the Islanders raced down the ice, with Bo Horvat scoring the game’s first goal with 9:31 left in the first.
The Islanders twisted the knife again and again, taking a 2-0 lead with 33 seconds left in the first period, then getting a power-play goal from Horvat with 1:18 left in the second.
“We say all the right things about keep trusting the process, keep trusting the process, but the longer you go without getting the result it becomes a very hard thing, so we need to be mentally tough,” Rangers captain J.T. Miller said. “It’s a lot of zeros at home for us. We’re only human. It’s frustrating.”
The home fans let them hear it, through multiple rounds of boos and half-hearted “Let’s go Rangers” cheers that failed to spread.
But the soundtrack was dominated by silence, rendering the Garden — and rivalry game — unrecognizable.
Playing in a conference in which no other team has fewer than three home wins, the Rangers have scored in just two of their seven home games.
They have played more than 421 minutes at home and seen six shots hit the back of the net.
“I wish I could put my finger on the struggles we’ve had at home to this point,” Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said.
The Rangers return to the Garden on Monday to face the Predators.
Then comes hope, with five of the six games to follow on the road.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
