Rangers scoring woes continue as they lose, 2-1, to Capitals in Game 4

After what was a dream regular season for the New York Rangers, their 2015 postseason is quickly becoming a nightmare.

They just can’t score.

Or, they at least can’t score enough to keep pace with a rock solid Capitals team that came back from an 0-1 deficit Wednesday night in Game 4 in D.C. to win, 2-1, and grab a commanding 3-1 series lead in the best-of-seven Eastern semifinal.

Washington’s Andre Burakovsky tallied his second goal of the night just 24 seconds into the third period after Ryan McDonagh couldn’t maintain possession of the puck along the boards near mid-ice. Troy Brower broke things up, Burakovsky collected the puck and beat Henrik Lundqvist for the second time in the span of a real-time hour.

Burakovsky’s first goal tied the game, 1-1, late in the second period when he pried the puck loose from along the boards and ripped one past Lundqvist.

The Rangers got off to a decent start despite not scoring in the first period. They got more shots on goal, 13-8, and out-hit the Caps, 15-11, in the game’s first 20 minutes. Still, there was an early power play opportunity that they could not capitalize on and it added up to, at the time, 11 of their previous 16 periods in which they were shutout.

There was hope that there would be a relative scoring outburst for the Blueshirts when Derick Brassard finally broke through 6:12 into the second period. Brassard beat Braden Holtby top shelf off a beauty of a dish from Martin St. Louis, who led him perfectly. But the Rangers would never truly challenge Holtby,

It was a chippy game throughout, particularly late and after the Capitals’ second goal as Tanner Glass and Tim Gleason duked it out in a scrum which left Gleason busted wide open.

Game 5 is scheduled for Friday (7 p.m., NBCSN) at Madison Square Garden.

A potentialGame 6 would be Sunday back in Washington (time TBA).