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Rangers still struggling to put together consecutive wins

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Oscar Lindberg tries to hit the puck as Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov defends during the Rangers' loss.Alex Brandon/AP

Oscar Lindberg tries to hit the puck as Capitals center Evgeny Kuznetsov defends during the Rangers’ loss.

A little less than two months ago on Thanksgiving Eve, the Rangers were preparing to host the Canadiens at the Garden as the top team in the NHL, tied in points with their opponent that evening, as well as Dallas, but holding a game in hand on both.

They were on top of the hockey world 21 games into the season, about seven-and-a-half months after clinching last season’s Presidents’ Trophy, finding ways to win games even when they weren’t playing sound hockey.

The Rangers lost 5-1 to Montreal that night, a defeat which marked the beginning of a seismic shift for a team that has slowly and steadily fallen toward the middle of the pack of an Eastern Conference, in which six points separates third place from 13th. Including that game, the Rangers are 8-13-3 in their last 24 games after a Sunday loss in Washington, leaving them at 24-16-5 (53 points) ahead of Tuesday’s game against the Canucks (19-17-10, 48 points) at MSG.(Montreal has also plummeted since that night, currently losers of 16 of their last 20 games.)

While December was mostly dreadful, there have been signs of improved play over the last few weeks, but inconsistency still mars a team with Stanley Cup aspirations after falling in Game 7 of last year’s Conference Finals and losing in the Cup Final the year prior. The Rangers haven’t won consecutive games since Nov. 21 and 23, the two games before that Thanksgiving Eve loss.

As the season moves to a handful of games past the halfway point, alternating wins and losses, as the Rangers have done over their last 10 games, isn’t going to help them hold onto the playoff spot third place in the Metropolitan Division guarantees them.

“If something happens, we’ve got to bail each other out, make a save, try to be in the right place to have a safety belt there for a guy,” defenseman Dan Girardi said Sunday. “No one is pointing fingers in here. We all want to play as a team and help each other out. We’ve just got to find our way to get out of this and get some wins together here. We don’t want to slide down the standings anymore. We want to be going the other way.”

Lately it seems if the Rangers aren’t playing five-on-five, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. They have scored just one power-play goal in their last 26 tries, dropping them to 18 percent overall for the season. Furthermore, after surrendering two power-play goals to the Capitals on Sunday, the Rangers’ penalty-kill has allowed an average of one power-play goal per game over their last 17 matches, dropping their penalty-kill percentage to 78.8 for the season, tied for 23rd-best in the league.

“On the power play I’m not sure what exactly the answer is,” Derek Stepan said. “We have the guys in here with the talent to make it work, but we have to find a way to get it done.”

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