Ben Chiarot # 8 of the Montreal Canadiens and Jesper Fast # 17 of the New York Rangers battle for position (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
The New York Rangers travel to Montreal for their third game of the season and are still looking for their first win. It won’t be easy for the blueshirts. It’s the Canadiens’ home opener and they’re looking for two losses, including an embarrassing 5-1 win against the humble Buffalo Sabers, even after their first win of the season. The Canadiens haven’t lost their first three games of a season since 1995/96 when they lost their first five. Since 1917, Montreal has only started the season five times with three defeats in a row.
Match
new York ranger
0-1-1 
Montreal Canadian
0-2-0
Saturday October 16
19 o’clock
Rangers will have to forego the Ryan Strome center, who was left at home due to COVID logs. The good news is that Sammy Blais, who missed the last game with a lower body injury, is ready to go.
It takes the Rangers a full 60 minutes to win this game, something they didn’t do in their first two games.
Oh yes, one more thing. The Montreal Canadiens were finalists in the Stanley Cup last season.
About the rangers
The Rangers made the announcement about Strome dubbed a “COVID-19 Protocol Absenteeism” and there is no word on what that means. There’s no way to know if he tested positive for the virus or if it was just a precautionary measure based on symptoms. There are very strict pandemic rules for traveling to Canada and that could be a reason too. We’ll see if he’s in Toronto on Monday.
To replace him, the Rangers called Greg McKegg from Hartford. He didn’t play in Hartford’s season opener on Friday, a 2-1 win over the Bridgeport Islanders. There is no word on how the lines are realigned when power goes out. It is believed that FIlip Chytil would move up to the center of Artemi Panarin and Kaapo Kakko, but it is also an opportunity for Gerard Gallant, Panarin and Mika Zibanejad to ally on the same line.
No matter what happens, if he loses electricity, Gallant can experiment with his lines. There have been some chemistry issues on the newly configured lines so far this season. When Chytil starred in the last exhibition game, he had a hat trick.
The Rangers have failed to win at least once in their first three games only twice since the 2004/05 lockout. This game is the start of a four-game road trip for the Blueshirts, so an early opportunity to connect but also a challenging schedule.
The biggest problem for the Rangers in their first two games was an inconsistent effort. In Washington they played well for 33 minutes, then their game plan fell apart and they were knocked down. Against Dallas, they came to life in the middle of the second period and dominated a game they should have won.
As a result, coach Gerard Gallant is consistently optimistic about the team and their game. He praised the good tracks and talked about the need to play like this for 60 minutes. When the Rangers get into trouble, you can tell by a lack of concentration in the face-off circle and multiple ball losses in the neutral zone.
The spikes in these games were dramatic. Halfway through the Caps game, the Rangers shot them 13-6. They were shot the rest of Route 21-11.
It was the other way around against Dallas. The stars had a 13-5 shot lead six minutes into the second period. The Rangers knocked them out for the remainder of regular time at 28:11.
It’s a tiny sample size, but the Rangers average 29.1 hits per game, the fourth most in the NHL. Last season, the average was just under 23, 13th place in the league. With the increase in physicality, there is a risk of further penalties and the penalty shoot-out has not been good so far this season, allowing four goals in eight chances.
It would be easy to find answers if they’d got off to a bad start in both games, but the two efforts were so different that it’s impossible to pinpoint any particular problem other than saying the team has to play the entire game .
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