One more look at this game, from the BW perspective. Shutouts are always a bit of a kick to the groin, although not nearly as bad if you manage 20+ shots. As with scoring, there can be a lot of luck to stopping the puck as well.

I (and others) had kind of anticipated struggling a bit against the Rangers, and coming off a game the previous night probably didn't help things. On the upshot, at least the BW doesn't entirely kick us when we're down...

Key

Vertical blue lines -- Our goals

Vertical black lines -- Their goals

Shaded green -- Powerplays

Shaded red -- Penalty kills

• Way too much red against a good team - you cannot beat a superior team this way.
• We were actually quite back-and-forth at evens, including a pretty impressive surge early in the 3rd period (ended by - you guessed it - a penalty).
• Another game, another goal within the first 5 minutes. It is becoming our trademark, now I wish the damn goal wasn't so frequently against us.
• We needed this All-Star Break, I think. A string of bad luck, and a series of depressing losses, were doing us no favors.