On November 23rd, the New York Rangers beat the Nashville Predators in a 3-0 shutout win to go 16-3-2 and sit right with the cream of the crop in the NHL. Since then, they have gone 4-9-2 and are barely in the rear view mirror of the Washington Capitals who are eight points ahead with three games in hand in the Metropolitan. Every game since then we expect the team that was one win away from reaching the Stanley Cup Final in back to back years to snap out of it. But they haven’t been able to do it, unless you consider an overtime death struggle against the larger struggles of the Anaheim Ducks a breakthrough victory.
So, what in the world is happening?
Full disclosure, I’m a Rangers fan. So everything I write comes with the frustration of having sat and watched a good amount of their recent struggles. Now, if I was the right person to fix it, I’d be the GM. (Well, I would have been the assistant for many years because Glen Sather has … and some say always will be … running the show.) So all I can really do is figure out what the heck is wrong, and handicap the chances of a New Year’s rebirth of the team that plays on Broadway.
Injuries
It’s easy to say that injuries have decimated this team, and they have. The Rangers lost Derek Stepan, who just came back from broken ribs, Dan Girardi … who has been out for two weeks with a knee injury, and Kevin Klein who has been out since the end of November with an oblique injury. But it goes a little deeper than that. While the Rangers have missed Stepan, they averaged 2.6 goals per game in his absence. While that isn’t great, it would put a team at the middle of the pack in the league this year. And there were plenty of games in that span where the Rangers scored four or five goals and would still lose.
Dan Girardi is another animal. He has played major minutes for a good seven seasons now, and all the blocked shots are taking their toll on the 31-year-old, who plays older than 31. Metric-wise, his Corsi and Fenwick numbers this season fall well below what he’s done in the past. Just from last season to this, his even strength relative Corsi has gone from -5.5 to -9.3, and his Relative Fenwick rating has gone from -5 to -8.1.
Do you want to go by the eye test? Okay … he’s slow. Check out Johnny Gaudreau’s goal against the Rangers on December 12th:
To be fair, this was Girardi’s last game before he sat out due to injury. But that looked like a very old man chasing Johnny Hockey. To make up for a lack of speed no matter the reason, one must play smart and put himself in good defensive position. Girardi, with the play going up the far boards, for some reason positioned himself on the near boards and let Gaudreau come up the middle, where a clearly compromised Girardi has no chance to catch him. These are the kind of mistakes that have haunted the Rangers time and time again, which we’ll explore later.
The biggest loss might be Klein, whose relative Corsi and Fenwick numbers are very good. He’s due back sometime after the calendar flips to 2016. When Girardi returns from injury, it’ll be interesting to see who plays and who sits. Dylan McIlrath has found a nice rhythm playing with Keith Yandle and deserves playing time. Would Alain Vigneault have the guts to put his best lineup on the ice at the expense of playing time for the diminished Girardi at some point?
Cap Hell
The Rangers’ cap situation has forced them to do things they didn’t want to do. The obvious move was trading Carl Hagelin in the off-season for Emerson Etem. It was a move the Rangers had to make as they were pinned up against the ceiling, and they were uncomfortable paying Hagelin finisher money when he’s not a finisher. But although Hagelin isn’t a finisher, his world class speed is missed in the defensive zone, as it enabled him to get to loose pucks and keep them from being 50/50 board battles which was a huge help, if not necessarily obvious on a score sheet.
But a less obvious residue of the cap came when Antti Raanta got hurt. Doesn’t seem like a big deal in a vacuum. But the Rangers had to bring up Magnus Hellberg to back up Henrik Lundqvist, which put the Rangers just a touch over the cap. To get back under, the Rangers sent down promising prospect Brady Skjei, who showed himself well in his first two games in the league, to make room for less expensive journeyman Chris Summers. Summers, against Washington, committed an avoidable penalty against the Caps with the score tied at 3-3. Alex Ovechkin cashed in to make it 4-3, and went on to demoralize the Rangers 7-3. Little things like that kill teams during bad stretches. Large untradeable contracts like Girardi’s aren’t going to help fix the situation.
Defensive Zone Breakdowns
Don’t worry, I’m not going to get too technical with you on this one. But the biggest thing that has sent the Rangers to their doom night after night after night has been forwards forgetting how to play defense in their own zone. Check out this Tyler Myers goal from December 18th:
I thought Rick Nash has played like a legitimate Selke trophy candidate the last two seasons … especially last season where he always put himself into good position in his own end. On the above play, he looked like a horse on a merry-go-round as Myers snuck behind him and took the open shot. Nash’s numbers in December reflect that, as he’s a -5 for the month even though he has eight December points with only two on the power play. Ryan McDonagh, probably the Rangers’ second best player, was -6 for the month. Mats Zuccarello and Derick Brassard were -3 and -2 even though they produced at even strength for the month.
Bad stretches are one thing. Everyone goes through them. But even with the injuries, it seems that some coaching adjustments could easily fix this. And that will be the challenge for Vigneault. The Rangers have gotten to the Cup Final and to Game 7 of the ECF because they took a defensive base that they learned from John Tortorella and combined it with the offensive freedom that Vigneault gave them to take advantage of the offensive talent on the roster. So is this a bad stretch? Or is this the defensive lessons they learned from Tortorella finally washing away with time and roster turnover?
Secondary Scoring
For as much as the top line of the Rangers is producing offensively (if not defensively), the secondary scoring of the Rangers has disappeared. Kevin Hayes has gone from 9 points in November to 2 in December. (And three since that game against Nashville on the 23rd.) Oscar Lindberg has been one of the best rookie stories of the year, but he hasn’t had a point since December 3rd. Chris Kreider? So much has been expected of Kreider, but he only has 16 points in 36 games and has been on milk cartons all season.
It’s all part of the steep decline of the Rangers from November to December. When nothing is going right, health, scoring, defense and coaching, it’s hard for any team to produce. And certainly it’s hard for Henrik Lundqvist, who seems to be in the same position as he was under Tortorella: the position of having to do everything. There were signs of this even before the slide, as Nashville out shot the Rangers and dominated play at times with many more quality scoring chances. Two games before that, the Rangers escaped the Toronto Maple Leafs thanks to two horrid goals given up by Jonathan Bernier. So we saw the slide coming. But we didn’t think it would last this long.
The good news for the Rangers, aside from the fact that their record is still pretty good even after December, is that no team can sustain a downslide like this … just as no team could sustain what the Rangers did in November. Coaching adjustments, secondary scoring, and good health will get this team back on track and ready for the playoffs. Hoping Lundqvist will develop some extra super powers will not.
