Ryan Callahan scores twice to lead Lightning over Rangers

The Rangers had plenty of win-one-for-Marty games during last year’s postseason, but on Monday night they came up short. Very short.

The sloppy Blueshirts were blown out, 5-1, by the Lightning at the Garden in Martin St. Louis’ first game against his former team. Former Rangers captain Ryan Callahan, who was dealt for St. Louis at last season’s trade deadline in March, scored two goals for Tampa Bay.

St. Louis scored the lone goal for the Rangers (7-7-4) early in the second period, but that was hardly enough to beat the Lightning (13-4-2), which was clearly the better team on Monday night.

“You can live with yourself losing a game when you know you played the right way, you did some good things. I don’t know how we can live with that one,” St. Louis said. “This is a tough loss, a tough night in the way we played. It’s nowhere near where we have to play to give ourselves a chance.”

Former Rangers captain Ryan Callahan has some fans wishing he was still a Blueshirt as he scores twice in a 5-1 Rangers loss.

A power play goal by Callahan put the Lightning up by two late in the first period, but St. Louis pulled the Rangers to within one with a power play goal 32 seconds into the second on a lucky bounce off a Lightning defenseman. That was really the highlight of the night for the Rangers, as the Lightning stormed right back with two goals in the second and another by Callahan in the third.

A frustrated Alain Vigneault shook up the lines in the third period, reuniting Rick Nash with Chris Kreider and Derek Stepan for the first time this season. It didn’t matter as the Rangers struggled to possess the puck much less score and managed a season-low 16 shots on goal.

“It’s very tough to explain,” Vigneault said. “Other than the start to both (of the first two) periods, everything in between was just a total disaster.”

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Vigneault spoke with the media for just under two minutes and then muttered a few choice curses under his breath as he walked away. Inside the locker room, the players voiced similar frustration.

“We’re all over the place,” Dan Girardi said. “Sometimes we’ll have a bunch of shifts where we compete and a bunch of shifts where we kind of just stand around and let a team run around us. We’ve got to get our stuff together here… it really didn’t matter who they had in tonight, we were getting exposed everywhere.”

The Rangers meet the Lighting next on Nov. 26, when St. Louis makes his first trip back to Tampa Bay. The former Lightning captain is sure to receive an emotional thank you on the Tampa video board, similar to the one former Rangers Callahan, Anton Stralman and Brian Boyle received on Monday at MSG.

It seemed to be more of a distraction on Monday as the Rangers string of mediocre hockey continued.

“We know we’ve got to be a lot better and we’ve got to fix our game,” said Nash, whose neutral-zone turnover in the second period led directly to a Steven Stamkos goal. “You can’t have one good game, three bad games, one good game. It’s just not what good teams do.”