How bаdly dіd Rаngers асtuаlly get outрlаyed by Flаmes іn 3-2 loss?

The New York Rangers seemingly turned a corner the past few games, initiating more offense and not spending as much time pinned in their own zone defensively. It’s a big reason why the Rangers had a three-game winning streak earlier this week.

That all changed Thursday night against the Calgary Flames, when they allowed a season-high 49 shots on goal and were out-attempted by a whopping 90-53 in a 3-2 road loss.

So just how bad was this game when taking a look at all of the underlying numbers?

The Rangers allowed 5.47 expected goals (xG), according to Natural Stat Trick. That was the second most they’ve allowed this season, behind only their 5-3 loss to the Washington Capitals on Oct. 29. In that game they allowed a whopping 8.97 xG, which is actually the most any team has allowed all season. The Blueshirts were only able to generate 2.42 xG themselves, for just a 30.66 percent share overall.

On Thursday, the worst period for the Rangers was the first. The discrepancy in xG was 1.45 to 0.23 in favor of Calgary, an 86.2 percent share. The Flames benefited from having the only two power plays in that first period, but only created 0.41 of that xG with the man advantage. It’s clear that the home team came out with the better legs from the start of the game.

“They were better than us in the first.” Peter Laviolette said after the game, pointing out something that was pretty clear for anyone that watched.

New York was able to right the ship in the second period, not only from an underlying numbers perspective, but on the scoreboard as well. After going down 2-0, they scored twice in 16 seconds to tie the game late in the period. The Rangers actually had more expected goals than the Flames in the middle frame, 1.28 to 1.16.

The final period looks more like the first one did. The Rangers started off the period competing and looked like they were going to carry that momentum over from the second period, and got their only power play of the game just 1:03 into the third. They weren’t able to keep this up throughout the period since the xG was 2.85 to 0.91 in favor of Calgary. However, those numbers don’t actually tell the whole story, and the Rangers look better if you look deeper into some other numbers.

Rangers’ 5-on-5 play vs Flames better than you might think

As mentioned above, the Rangers only got one power play Thursday Meanwhile the Flames had five. That makes the raw numbers look much worse than they actually were. Calgary had 0.84 of their 5.47 xG with the man advantage, and the Rangers had just 0.24 on their one opportunity. At five-on-five, the 2.69-1.96 Calgary edge was much closer than the total xG differential.