Rangers glaring power-play issues are their undoing in loss to Oilers

EDMONTON, Alberta — The Rangers hung with an Oilers team that has three of the top five producing skaters in the NHL on Monday night.Despite two of them landing on the scoresheet — who else but Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl (twice)? — the Blueshirts kept this 3-1 loss relatively low-event and generated spurts of offensive pressure to make this second meeting in nine days a much more evenly matched affair than the first at Madison Square Garden.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mollie Walker about the inside buzz on the Rangers.

As disjointed as their power play has been all season long, however, the lack of production had never so glaringly cost the Rangers like it did Monday night.The visitors went 0-for-5 with the man advantage, including two in the third period and one with 1:27 left in regulation.The Rangers went without a single shot on goal during the first power play before giving up an empty-net goal to Draisaitl on the second.After the 4-1 loss to the Oilers on Nov.

1, the Rangers coaching staff made the executive decision to break up the two power play units the team had ridden for a majority of the season.In addition to personnel changes, the Rangers leaned on double-shifting Adam Fox as well.Plugging players in different positions hasn’t had the desired effect.

Neither has double-shifting Fox.The Rangers carried a 20.8 power play percentage into Monday’s contest, which ranked 19th in the NHL.A second-ranked penalty kill has offset their power-play struggles, but the Blueshirts are built for the man advantage to be a separating factor, and it simply has not been.For the second time in two games in the span of nine days, McDavid opened the scoring against the Rangers to extend his point streak to a staggering 19 consecutive games — or every single Oilers game this season.While McDavid’s goal off the rush in their Nov.1 meeting was an individual effort on Dylan Garand, Mond...