Rangers shut out again at home, this time by Islanders

Remember the movie “Groundhog Day,’’ in which Bill Murray gets caught in a time loop and is forced to relive the same day over and over again? That’s exactly what the Rangers are going through at Madison Square Garden this season.

In their version of the story, the Rangers keep living the same nightmare every time they play at home: They can’t score a goal most games and therefore can’t win.

It happened again Saturday night, this time in a 5-0 loss to the Islanders, who handed the Rangers their fifth shutout loss in seven home games this season. They are 0-6-1 at home and have been outscored 17-1 in the six regulation losses.

Bo Horvat had two goals, Jonathan Drouin, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Anders Lee also scored and goaltender Ilya Sorokin made 33 saves for the Islanders.

“It’s hard,’’ Rangers captain J.T. Miller said. “We all care. It’s not like it’s an effort-based thing. We started ready, on time again today, had a great start and then get a little careless with some decisions. And it cost us.

“And then you press, because . . . it’s a lot of zeros at home for us.’’

The seven-game winless streak at home is the worst start to a season at home in Rangers history. The 1943-44 team, which went 6-39-5 overall, started the season 0-5-1 in its first six home games.

“It’s frustrating not to be able to get a win at home,’’ Mika Zibanejad said. “You want to build a feeling for teams coming in here [that] it’s going to be tough for them. But obviously we haven’t. It’s been so many different types of games at home this year, and obviously one part of it is we don’t score any goals.’’

Zibanejad nearly opened the scoring for the Rangers (7-7-2), who dominated play for the first half of the first period. Coming off the bench, he picked up a loose puck just outside the Islanders’ blue line, and as his teammates went off to complete a line change, he drove into the Islanders’ zone one-on-four and ripped a laser of a shot off the crossbar at 7:29.

Exactly three minutes later, Horvat scored his first goal, driving to the back post to tap in a pass from Emil Heineman for his 10th goal.

Things got worse for the Rangers when Zibanejad’s pass for Artemi Panarin was poked away by Islanders defenseman Scott Mayfield and turned into an Islanders rush in which Anthony Duclair found Drouin alone in the slot. Drouin pulled the puck to his backhand and slipped it past Igor Shesterkin (21 saves) to make it 2-0 with 33.0 seconds left in the period.

After that, the Rangers seemed to fade away. Horvat’s second goal, a power-play effort at 18:42 of the second period, made it 3-0, and there was no coming back after that.

Pageau scored an empty-netter with 2:01 remaining and Lee scored on a two-on-one to make it 5-0 with 29.9 seconds left.

Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said this loss was different from some of the other home losses in which they outplayed the opponent but simply couldn’t score.

This time, he said, the Rangers did not play well enough to win.

“For me tonight, we beat ourselves,’’ Sullivan said. “We give them three two-on-one goals. We give them a two-on-one goal with 30 seconds left. It’s just, it’s inexplicable to me. But tonight’s a very different story . . . We beat ourselves tonight. Give the Islanders credit, they played hard, they played a solid game. But we beat ourselves in a lot of ways.’’

The Rangers, who were coming off a solid 4-1 win over the Red Wings in Detroit on Friday, will be off Sunday and at home on Monday against the Nashville Predators.

“I don’t know, we got to find a way to score,’’ Zibanejad said. “I don’t care how it looks, what it looks like, what happens on Monday. We’ve just got to get a win.’’

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.