Rangers Edged by Oilers at The Garden

With Connor McDavid paying a visit to the Garden, the Rangers were as stingy from the drop of the puck as they have been in any of their five games so far. But the strong start they wanted did not pay dividends at the finish.
In the most defensively pitched battle of the Rangers young season, the Blueshirts fell to the Edmonton Oilers, 2-1, in a Saturday matinee at Madison Square Garden. Mika Zibanejad got the Rangers going early with his first goal of the season, and the Rangers mounted a push in the late stages but were unable duplicate Thursday night's late heroics from their overtime victory over San Jose.
McDavid scored the game-winner in the third period to go along with a first-period assist, and Cam Talbot made 23 saves for his first career win in five tries against his former team.

And in spite of finally breaking through with his first goal, Zibanejad couldn't shake the frustration of ringing two other shots off of goalposts seeing a third try swept off the goal line by McDavid. Meanwhile, Henrik Lundqvist, the man Talbot used to back up on Broadway, made 25 saves for the Rangers and has held opponents to two goals in each of his four starts this season.
"We didn't give up the odd-man rushes we'd been giving up the first four games … but I thought in turn we lost a little bit of our aggressive puck pursuit in the offensive zone," coach David Quinn said. "We've got to score more goals. We've got to have more of a tenacity in the offensive zone. There's a happy medium we've got to reach."
"From my perspective it was an easier game to play. We didn't give up too many odd-man rushes, and I felt like we were a compact team," said Lundqvist. "We just came up a little short."

The loss dropped the Rangers to 1-1 on their three-game homestand against Western Conference opponents and snapped a five-game winning streak against the Oilers.
McDavid has factored in all five goals the Oilers have scored this season (two goals, three assists). His game-winner on Saturday came on a power play 6:23 into the third period with the Rangers dealing with one of three holding penalties they had to kill in the third period.
"We did a lot of good things, let's be honest here. It's a good hockey game," Lundqvist said. "But it's pretty clear to me why we lost - we lost the special-teams game. In this league that's so important in so many games, esp when we're not scoring that many goals.
"The problem is, if you start taking too many penalties, sooner or later they're going to find one."
The Rangers - less than 36 hours removed from an emotional comeback win over the Sharks that gave Quinn his first NHL victory - stressed beforehand the importance of coming out strong at the 1 p.m. faceoff time, and they nearly took the lead a half-minute in when Zibanejad found the iron for the first time in the game. Instead, it took Zibanejad 12:49 to put the Blueshirts in front, when Marc Staal's centering pass ticked off of Oilers defenseman Adam Larsson's skate and found Zibanejad at the right hashmarks with room to shoot.
It was Zibanejad's first goal of the season on his 17th shot; he finished with a game-high four shots on goal in 22 minutes on ice and drew praise afterward for his line's performance in matching up with the McDavid unit for much of the afternoon.
"They played well - they spent a lot of time in the offensive zone, and I thought they did a pretty good job of neutralizing McDavid as much as you can," Quinn said of the Chris Kreider-Zibanejad-Jesper Fast unit. "Mika had a real good night. I'm glad he got on the scoreboard, he's been working hard with not a lot to show for it offensively."
Zibanejad was equally happy to pick up his first goal, but lamented hitting the post to open the game, then again in the second period, just after McDavid had taken one away from him. "They just didn't seem to want to go in for another one," Zibanejad said. "But I'll keep shooting."
Just 88 seconds after Zibanejad's goal, McDavid's unit provided a response when Darnell Nurse's shot hit bodies in front and fell nicely for Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to tap in.
"That goal they got deflated us a little bit because they didn't have a lot going on," Quinn said. "All of a sudden, you're playing well and boom, it's 1-1. I think that kind of swayed things a little bit."
The Rangers complete the three-game homestand on Tuesday night against the Colorado Avalanche, on First Responders Night at the Garden.
"We were right there," said Staal. "We've got to find a way as a team to be confident in those situations and learn how to close out a game."
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