The Rangers are trying to either build or maintain a winning culture through what almost certainly will be a lot of losing this season. The holdovers from the Era of Excellence Without a Cup II may be realistic, but they are also insistent. Take a rather important fellow named Henrik Lundqvist, for one.
Sunday night’s 4-1 defeat to the Flames at the Garden featured a second period that represented the club’s poorest 20 minutes since the third period of Game 3 in Raleigh, when the Candy Canes struck for four goals against a defensively disorganized squad.