VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ So many of the New York Rangers' games lately have had a familiar look to them _ they fall behind, make a spirited comeback, lose in overtime or a shootout, and talk afterward about all the positives they can take from a loss.
Well, this one was quite different.
Ranger forwards Chris Kreider and Brendan Lemieux were both ejected from the game in the second period Wednesday _ according to Rogers Sportsnet, the Rangers became the first team in the NHL this season to have two players ejected from the same game _ and the Blueshirts, forced to kill two major penalties and play with 16 skaters for more than half the game, lost to the Vancouver Canucks, 4-1 at Rogers Arena in the second game of their four-game road trip.
Kreider, who had been reunited with Mika Zibanejad on the first line, after two-plus games apart, was sent off at 4:23 of the second period, after his right elbow came flying around and hit Vancouver's Elias Petterson in the jaw behind the Rangers' net. Petterson fell to the ice and stayed down, and, at first, Kreider skated to the penalty box. But a few minutes later, after the replay of the hit was shown on the video board, Kreider was given a five-minute major for elbowing and the automatic game misconduct.
The Canucks scored one goal on the major power play, that from Brock Boeser, at 6:07, but, 11 seconds after the penalty expired, Tyler Motte got a breakaway and beat Henrik Lundqvist to make it 2-0. Then, 11 seconds after that, at 9:45, Motte scored again, on a long shot through traffic, right as Antoine Roussel appeared to skate into Lemieux. Roussel also went down hard, and was writhing on the ice in distress, and Lemieux was sent to the penalty box.
But, just as with Kreider, the officials soon took Lemieux out of the box and sent him to the dressing room, giving him a match penalty for hitting to the head, and giving Vancouver another five-minute major power play. Lemieux protested vociferously that he didn't deserve a penalty, let alone a major and an ejection. The video replay appeared to show Roussel was looking the other way and simply turned into Lemieux, who stood his ground. The replay also appeared to show that Lemieux contacted Roussel shoulder to shoulder, as opposed to hitting him in the head, so it is possible that it could be rescinded on Thursday, as Zibanejad's major boarding penalty in last week's 1-0 loss to Dallas was the next day.
But all that mattered to the Rangers in the moment was that suddenly, they were down 3-0 and down two forwards. Vancouver had lost two players, too, to injury, but Petterson eventually returned later in the period.
Down to 16 skaters, the Rangers were all discombobulated for a while. Having to kill 10 minutes of penalty time in the second period _ they allowed just the one power play goal _ meant players who don't normally kill penalties spent extended time on the bench. Later in the period, when the Rangers got their first power play of the game, they were missing Kreider and Lemieux, who normally are on the power play. That led to Jesper Fast actually getting a shift on the second power play, taking Lemieux's role of the player who stands in front of the crease and screens the goalie.
The Rangers managed to get on the board in the third period, on a power-play goal by Pavel Buchnevich at 10:28, but they couldn't get any closer. Jake Virtanen added an empty-net goal at 19:35 for Vancouver.
