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Author: Neil Keefe

Blogs • Rangers

Jan 27, 2021

David Quinn Believes Rangers Have ‘Played and Competed for 60 Minutes’

David Quinn is getting moodier with each loss, and now that there have been four straight, his postgame press conferences are growing more tense.

The Rangers have now played 11 percent of their season and they have one win. One. That win came five games ago when they avenged their season-opening loss to the Islanders with an impressive 5-0 win over their New York rival. Since then, it’s been losing, losing, losing and more losing.

The Rangers’ season is in trouble. As crazy as that sounds after six games, it’s true. The Rangers’ season began on Jan. 14. There’s a good chance it could be over playoff-wise on Feb. 1.

It’s been a while since I broke down the postgame press conference from a Rangers coach following every game. It’s been eight years actually since John Tortorella gave wild, entertaining, but also outlandish postgame press conferences in what would be his final season as Rangers head coach. Quinn isn’t at the end of his leash in New York the way Tortorella was when he helped usher Marian Gaborik out of town because the dynamic scorer wouldn’t muck it up in the corners or block shots with his face. But Quinn’s seat is heating up. Rangers fans are starting to turn on the third-year coach after the sluggish start to the season coupled with his unfathomable lineup decisions.

Quinn could help himself by making simple yet logical changes to his current in-game strategy. He could remove Ryan Strome from PP1, stop dressing Jack Johnson, not shuffle lines every other shift and play Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad together at even strength. If the Rangers were to still lose with these changes, then so be it. At least they could say they were doing everything possible to try to win. Instead, they will continue on their current course, which has them in last place in the East, tied for the worst record in the league with Ottawa.

Quinn is getting moodier with each loss, and now that there have been four straight, his postgame press conferences are growing more tense. So it’s time to revisit the tradition built during Tortorella’s final season in New York and analyze Quinn’s postgame press conferences after the team loses, using the same format from eight years ago.

On the team’s face-off struggles.
“A face-off is a battle, not only with the centerman, but the flanks and the wingers, and too often we weren’t ready to compete in those battles.”

The Rangers won 30 percent of the face-offs in the game. Thirty percent! Quinn used the word “abysmal” to describe his team’s effort on face-offs and that might be a generous description. The Rangers haven’t been good enough this season in several areas, but face-offs have easily been their most glaring weakness.

On the play from the first two lines.
“Yes, we’re not getting enough from our Top 6, for sure.”

This answer is almost like a trick because no one know who the Top 6 forwards on the team are because of how frequently Quinn shuffles his lines. We know for certain that Panarin, Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Pavel Buchnevich, and unfortunately, Strome, are in the Top 6. Filip Chytil’s injury takes him out of the conversation, leaving the other spot to either Alexis Lafrenière or Kappo Kakko. Here’s the thing: the 2020 No. 1 pick and 2019 No. 2 pick should both be in the Top 6. Only on the Rangers would only one of them be in the Top 6, and at times neither of them are.

You would think the Rangers were stacked with forwards to be unable to give Lafrenière and Kakko first- or second-line minutes. That’s poorly Quinn is utilizing his roster. Sadly, Strome is going to continue to be used as the second-best center on the team, if he isn’t any good, and Kreider is going to keep his spot based on seniority and money owed. (Once again why the team should have moved on from him). That means less ice time for Lafreniere and Kakko, the two forwards who should receive the most ice time of anyone not named Panarin or Zibanejad.

To put into perspective how bad the Rangers’ top forwards (whoever they are) have been, Phil Di Giuseppe has as many points (4) as Kreider and Zibanejad combined. Colin Blackwell has as many points (2) as both Kreider and Zibanejad, and as many goals as Zibanejad (1). Lafrenière doesn’t have a point.

I went back and looked at how each No. 1 overall draft pick has started their career since Steven Stamkos was selected first in 2008, and here is the game number each recorded their first career point.

Jack Hughes: 7
Rasmus Dahlin: 4
Nico Hischier: 2
Auston Matthews: 1
Connor McDavid: 3
Aaron Ekblad: 1
Nathan MacKinnon: 1
Nail Yakupov: 2
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins: 1
Taylor Hall: 2
John Tavares: 1
Steven Stamkos: 8

Lafrenière needs to get on the scoresheet on Thursday to tie Hughes and beat Stamkos. Otherwise he will need to score on Saturday to tie Stamkos. Even if he hasn’t at least picked up a second assist after Monday’s game against Pittsburgh, oh boy.

On the team’s play during the four-game losing streak.
“I thought for the last four nights we were skating and competing, for the most part, 60 minutes.”

If the scoreboard counted expected goals and if the standings counted moral victories, the Rangers wouldn’t own a 1-4-1 record, instead, they’d be 4-1-0. But their knack for blowing leads, allowing soft goals and collectively underachieving has lost them five of six games.

Yes, the Rangers have deserved better. They outshot the Devils 50-28 and controlled play and lost 4-3. They had a 3-1 lead against the Penguins and lost. Then they had leads of 1-0 and 2-1 against Penguins and still lost. They had those same leads against the Sabres and lost again. Some goals against have been soft, but not all of them.

It’s nearly impossible to say your team competed for 60 minutes for four straight games when you lost all four games, but Quinn did just that. Either Quinn has accepted losing or he has yet to realize he is a big reason to blame for some of the losing. (The Rangers haven’t scored a goal when his favorite player Johnson has been on the ice this season.)

On turning the season around.
“I’m still stewing about tonight. We’ll figure that out here in the next 48 hours.”

The Rangers had less than 48 hours until their next game against the Sabres by the time Quinn said he had 48 hours to figure out how to right the season. If the Rangers don’t start turning their moral victories into actual victories over the next three games, there won’t be a season to right.

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Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Podcast

Jan 27, 2021

Rangers Podcast: Another One-Goal Loss

The Rangers lost to the Sabres 3-2 and have now lost four straight games, all by one goal. Their season is slipping away.

The Rangers lost to the Sabres 3-2 on Tuesday and have now lost four straight games, all by one goal. To make matters worse, it was their third straight lost in which they had a lead in the game. They blew three leads in two games in Pittsburgh and blew another two leads in Buffalo. The Rangers’ postseason chances are declining by the day, and they need to turn their season around before they no longer can.

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Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Offseason

Jan 27, 2021

Hal Steinbrenner Shows True Colors in Adam Ottavino Trade

The Yankees say their goal each season is to win the World Series, but after the trade of Adam Ottavino, Hal Steinbrenner made it clear there’s a limit to how badly the wants to win it.

The Steinbrenners are poor. At least that’s what they want Yankees fans to think. That’s why Hal Steinbrenner went on the radio after the team’s disappointing postseason loss to the Rays and made sure to mention how the team didn’t make as much money as they normally do because of the shortened, fan-less season. And that’s why Adam Ottavino was traded to the Red Sox as part of a salary dump on Monday.

The Yankees didn’t have to trade Ottavino, especially to the Red Sox, but it’s clear Brian Cashman was told to keep the 2021 payroll below the $210 luxury-tax threshold. So rather than keep the right-hander in the Yankees’ bullpen during the team’s supposed championship window, Ottavino will now come out of the Red Sox’ bullpen and likely embarrass the Yankees when he does.

Ownership was so desperate to avoid paying any sort of luxury tax for 2021 that they were fine with Cashman sending Ottavino to their direct rival. The Steinbrenners are so worried about losing a home game’s worth of beer sales to payroll tax that they are completely accpeting of trading a right-on-right specialist to a team they play 19 times when eight of the Yankees’ nine everyday bats are right-handed hitters. The Yankees play 12 percent of their season against the Red Sox, and that means there will be an abundance of opportunities for Ottavino to strike out Aaron Judge, Luke Voit and Giancarlo Stanton in order with sweeping low-and-away sliders. I’m scared to think of what a Gary Sanchez at-bat against Ottavino will look like. There will come a game this season when the Yankees need a big hit against the Red Sox and Ottavino will come in the game and get the job done against them. Actually, there will likely be many games when the situation arises considering how many times they play each other.

Not only did the Yankees trade Ottavino within the division and to their hated rival, they will be paying him to pitch against them this season. As part of the deal, the Yankees are paying $850,000 of Ottavino’s salary, as he becomes the latest ex-Yankee in a long list of former Yankees who were paid to play and pitch against the Yankees (and beat them while doing so).

Ottavino wasn’t expendable either. Not the way he might have been, at least on paper, during spring training in 2019 when the Yankees had Dellin Betances, Tommy Kahnle, Chad Green, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. But then Betances got hurt and eventually became a Met and Kahnle got hurt and became a Dodger. For as inconsistent as Ottavino might be at times and for as bad as he is at holding runners on, he would still be at worst the Yankees’ fourth-best reliever to start 2021, and could very well become their best the way he was for a large part of 2019.

Now that Ottavino is gone, the Yankees have three trustworthy relievers in Green, Britton and Chapman, and I only put Chapman with the other two because of his career numbers. At this point, I don’t trust Chapman to tell me what day of the week it is. After those three, it’s Jonathan Loaisiga, Luis Cessa and I guess Michael King and Nick Nelson? Maybe Tyler Lyons and Nestor Cortes? It’s some combination of pitchers you never want to see warming up and pitchers you never want to see come into games. The Yankees gave away a valuable reliever in the middle of a championship window. Actually, they didn’t even just give him away. They are paying him to not pitch for them!

There’s no salary cap in baseball. If there were, maybe this move could be praised since it keeps the Yankees under the $210 million threshold and gives them the ability to re-sign Brett Gardner and still have enough money for midseason call-ups and potential trade deadline acquisitions. But there’s no salary cap in baseball, just the illusion of one, and because of that, this move is simply disgusting.

The Yankees’ payroll is now $50 million less than it was a year ago. $50 million. Whenever the Yankees don’t win the World Series, Hal Steinbrenner likes to apologize to the fans the way his father used to, but at least when his father would, it meant something. It wasn’t an empty gesture made between figuring out how to best keep fans out of the lower bowl during batting practice and making sure concession stand workers were putting the right amount of fries in each container to maintain margins. After the Yankees’ ALDS loss to the Rays, Steinbrenner said:

“I’m very disappointed, obviously. We invested a lot of time, energy, money into the team last offseason, and we all felt that we had a team that could win a championship, and we failed to do that. We didn’t even come close. So right now, at this point in time, all I can do is apologize to our fans. They deserved a better outcome than they got. Period. I mean, they just did.”

If the Yankees fail to win the World Series for the 12th straight year in 2021, he needs to have a better apology than that one. Cutting payroll by $50 million for the second time in a championship window (the team did the same thing after coming within one win of the World Series in 2017) is inexcusable for the franchise which makes more than any other in Major League Baseball.

The Yankees say their goal each season is to win the World Series, but after the trade of Ottavino, Steinbrenner made it clear there’s a limit to how badly he wants to win it.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

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Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Thoughts

Jan 25, 2021

Rangers Thoughts: Leading the League in Moral Victories

The Rangers had leads in both games in Pittsburgh and they lost both games. With three straight losses and one win in five games, the Rangers are in trouble not even two weeks into the season.

The Rangers had leads in both games in Pittsburgh and they lost both games. They blew a two-goal lead on Thursday and two one-goal leads on Sunday. With three straight losses and one win in five games, the Rangers are in trouble not even two weeks into the season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. In a week, we might know if the Rangers will have a season. They have currently lost three straight and four of five and are now headed to Buffalo for two games followed by two against the Penguins at the Garden. At the end of next Monday’s game against the Penguins, the Rangers will have played nine games, or 16 percent of their season.

2. Maybe the front office isn’t evaluating David Quinn and his team on wins and losses this season, in what should be the last rebuilding season for this roster. Maybe it’s still only about experience and development for the youngest team in the league. A bad week against the Sabres and Penguins and gaining experience and developing will be all the Rangers have to play for this season.

3. That’s not an exaggeration. I wrote (blogs) and spoke (on the podcast) at length before the season and in the first week of it about the importance of every single game, and continuously brought up the magic number of 1.2, which is the amount of points per game the Rangers need to reach the playoffs. Through five games, they have 3, when they need to have 6. They are in last place in the East and tied with Ottawa for the worst win percentage (.300) in the NHL.

4. Joe Micheletti continues to praise the Rangers in each broadcast about how good they look. Looking good while losing is still losing, and the Rangers have done that in all but one game. Outshooting the Devils 50-28 is nice, but shots don’t determine points in the standings. The youngest team in the league having leads in both games in Pittsburgh against a team in a Penguins team in a win-now window is nice, but blowing the lead in both games and losing both games isn’t impressive.

5. Micheletti would be better off saying “some Rangers have looked good” because that’s more accurate.

Here are the Rangers who have looked good this season:

Pavel Buchnevich
Filip Chytil
Phil Di Giuseppe
Adam Fox
Kaapo Kakko
K’Andre Miller
Artemi Panarin

6. That’s it. Mika Zibanejad has one goal. Alexis Lafreniere doesn’t have a point in what has to be the longest pointless streak at any level for the No. 1 pick. Jack Johnson … why even bother. Jacob Trouba and Ryan Lindgren have been inconsistent. Tony DeAngelo has been awful. Chris Kreider hasn’t been good and neither has Ryan Strome. Igor Shesterkin is giving up goals from the half-wall and hasn’t won a game, and Alexandar Georgiev erased his shutout with a disaster against the Devils. The fourth line hasn’t necessarily been bad, but they also haven’t done anything special, unless you count Colin Blackwell accidentally scoring.

7. I guess the one thing you could say is the Rangers could have won every game except their opening night embarrassment despite all of the issues and underachievers on the roster. Unfortunately, that’s not going to put four games back on the schedule and make it easier for the Rangers to reach the postseason.

8. The David Quinn Fan Club is dwindling by the day. It’s either this year or next year when results will matter to the front office, and if it’s this year, Quinn better figure it out and fast. I do believe the 2021-22 season will be when Quinn is finally evaluated on the team’s success in the standings, so he has 51 games (and possibly some playoff games) to learn how to win at the NHL level.

9. Here’s some advice for Quinn: Stop waiting until you desperately need a goal until you pair Panarin and Zibanejad; Stop playing Strome on PP1; Don’t play Johnson, but if you need to in the event of an emergency, never pair him with DeAngelo; Give Lafreniere as much ice time as possible, and Kakko too. These are all very simple things that could instantly begin to translate into wins, yet Quinn continues to make winning even harder than it already is.

10. At 1-3-1, the Rangers have 3 points and will need about 64 points over the next 51 games to make the playoffs. That’s now 1.26 points per game, up 0.06 from the start of the season. They will need to go something like 30-17-4 the rest of the way to reach the postseason. It’s still doable, but they can’t continue to stack losses or it will be impossible be a Top 4 team in the East. The all-division schedule won’t allow for the Rangers to go on the kind of run they want on in January, February and early March of last year. These next four games could be the season.

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Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Podcast

Jan 25, 2021

Rangers Podcast: Swept Away in Pittsburgh

Two games in Pittsburgh and two losses for the Rangers, who now sit alone in eighth and last place in the East.

Two games in Pittsburgh and two losses for the Rangers. The Rangers blew two one-goal leads and have now lost three straight and four of five to begin the season. The Rangers sit alone in eighth and last place in the East tied with Ottawa for the worst winning percentage in the league. Things need to change and change quickly if the Rangers want to think about the postseason.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New Rangers episodes after every game throughout the season.

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