Rangers stars Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad being put on defensive by Panthers

NHL

By Ethan Sears

SUNRISE, Fla. — After another game where the best thing you could say about the Rangers’ top line was that it wasn’t on the ice for a goal against, it’s getting near impossible to believe that’s enough.

If the Rangers’ own belief that they need more from Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider wasn’t betrayed by Peter Laviolette rotating through right-wingers for the pair in this game — starting with Jack Roslovic in place of a scratched Filip Chytil before moving to Kaapo Kakko — then it sure was by Laviolette’s own public assessment of his top line after the 3-2 overtime loss in Game 4 tied the series at two.

“We’re spending a little too much time playing defense, especially in the second period,” he said. “That happened last game as well. And so we’re not able to move and generate the way we want out there.”

Kreider and Zibanejad are sitting on zero points apiece for the series, a stat that might actually understate how dire things have gotten for the BFFs.

Four games into the series, Kreider has not yet recorded a shot on goal at five-on-five.

And though Zibanejad has accounted for a few chances, the Rangers have just a 22.92 expected goals percentage in his five-on-five minutes — which is slightly better than Kreider’s 20.43 percent mark.

Though they might not have been on for a goal against as a line, each has been on for a pair of goals against on their own.

“We’re not getting a lot of opportunities to make plays, obviously,” Kreider told The Post after Tuesday’s loss. “I think we had a couple looks. We bury those, you don’t ask me that question. So just gotta be opportunistic.”

There were chances for the top line in this one, albeit on a sparing basis.

Zibanejad sent a centering feed for Kreider early in the second that he couldn’t get on the end of and Kreider returned the favor in the third for a look that Sergei Bobrovsky saved.

Zibanejad had what looked to be an open-net chance on the power play in the first, which Bobrovsky somehow got to before the puck ringed off the crossbar.

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Any of those could have changed the course of the game. But none changes the underlying fact, which is that the Rangers are spending far too much time defending when their best players are on the ice.

“I think that they definitely had a handful of shifts that they were stacking in our zone,” Kreider said. “We have to find ways to tilt the ice and go the other way and do that to them.”

They have to find it, and they have to find it soon.