Rangers dominated by high-octane Canucks in another lopsided loss

This was supposed to be a marquee matchup, a competitive affair between two teams that have amounted to more than the sum of their parts through the first two-plus months of the season.

The Canucks sure played like the No. 1 team in the Pacific Division.

The same can’t be said for the No. 1 team in the Metropolitan Division.

The Rangers were made to look silly at times Monday night in a 6-3 loss to a high-octane Vancouver team, which shoved the Blueshirts aside and stepped into second place in the NHL standings with the victory.

“The chances that were there tonight were way too loud,” head coach Peter Laviolette said after his team suffered its eighth defeat of the season by three or more goals, as well as just its second set of consecutive losses.

“We weren’t under siege, but some of the decision-making for line changes or a line rush with people out of place or line changes, they bit us right away against a team that has a lot of talent. There’s no excuse for that. We’re not going to win giving up five goals. You can’t win. Not on a regular basis. You’ll win one out of 10, maybe you’ll score six. And so that has to get taken care of.”

Vancouver was always going to be a defensive challenge for the Rangers as the NHL’s leader in goals entering the game, but the home team coughed the puck up too many times against a club that repeatedly made it pay.

Laviolette had pinpointed decision making as an area the Rangers needed to tighten up, but Monday night’s performance only highlighted the issue more.

Facing a 3-1 deficit for the second time in as many games, which largely resulted from Rangers turnovers, Laviolette began tinkering with his lines in the second period to play Artemi Panarin as much as possible.

It essentially cut the Rangers’ forward bench in half as Laviolette rode his top two units, which left rookie Brennan Othmann with just two shifts in the middle frame.

Double shifting paid off when Alexis Lafreniere intercepted the puck at the blue line, pulled up in the offensive zone and hit a driving Panarin for his 26th goal of the season at the 8:19 mark.

The Canucks, however, were just getting comfortable under the Garden spotlight.

Elias Pettersson first waited out K’Andre Miller’s sliding play before putting a shot on Igor Shesterkin, who made the initial save but could not regroup as the Vancouver forward finessed his own rebound around the Rangers’ goalie.

It was an impressive sequence, but Nils Hoglander somehow outdid it just over a minute later, when the Canucks’ fourth-line wing pulled off a ridiculous backward tuck and backhanded finish for the 5-2 lead.

“Some other games we’re just giving up chance after chance after chance, I think the chances that we were giving were quality ones,” said Mika Zibanejad, who assisted on Vincent Trocheck’s power-play goal in the first period. “It’s from little things, taking care of the puck, breaking the puck out. Against a team like this one, when they score and they can score like they have been, you can’t give them anything for free.”

The Rangers may have struck first on a power-play goal from Trocheck, who notched his second of the night early in the third, but the Canucks pushed the pace during five-on-five play for a majority of the night.

Losing battle after battle for possession in the neutral zone, the Rangers allowed the Canucks to barge into their zone in all different ways throughout the game.

They gave up a game-tying goal to former Ranger J.T. Miller 53 seconds after they opened the scoring and the Rangers just chased from there.

Some boos followed the Rangers as they headed into the locker room for the first intermission. They grew even louder on their way in following the second period.

And it echoed around the arena after the final whistle as they trudged off the ice.

The Garden crowd thought they were going to get a more evenly matched game, too.