Rangers – Page 13 – Keefe To The City

Jan 11, 2021

2020-21 NHL All-Animosity Team

Because of the lack of Rangers games over the last 10 months, there hasn’t been any animosity build toward new players to make the team.

We are close to when the NHL All-Star Game would take place in a normal season. But this season hasn’t even started yet, and there won’t be an All-Star Game, so the time when I usually release the season’s All-Animosity Team won’t exist this year. Maybe it’s for the better after last year’s “All-Star Game” featured Chris Kreider, Travis Konecny, Tyler Bertuzzi, Anthony Duclair and some questionable decisions in net.

By the time the Rangers open their season on Jan. 14, 2021, they won’t have played a regular-season game in 10 months and a day. In that 10 months and a day, they will have played three total games, all in their best-of-5 series against Carolina.

Because of the lack of games, there hasn’t been any animosity build toward new players to make the team. The All-Animosity Team for this season is the same as it was last season with some updates.

FORWARDS

Matthew Barzal
We came dangerously close to Panarin and Barzal playing together for the foreseeable future. If not for Panarin taking less money (about $1 million per year less) to be a Ranger instead of an Islander, Rangers fans would have had to deal with those two flying around together for years to come. It gives me chills just thinking about it. Thankfully, it didn’t happen.

When Barzal is on the ice, I’m scared. I’m not scared at the level of Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, Nathan MacKinnon or Connor McDavid, but I’m still scared. He’s the one true playmaker on the Islanders and against the current state of the Rangers defense, he’s not someone I enjoy entering the offensive zone with the puck. Every time he does his patented circling of the zone with possession it feels like it will only end badly, and unfortunately, he’s not going anywhere in terms of the rivalry.

I was hoping Barzal got offer sheets this offseason, and was hoping the Rangers might have even been one of the teams to offer him one. If no offer sheets, I hoped Barzal would hold out for the season. That didn’t happen either. His deal eventually got done and he’ll be an Islander for at least the next three seasons. Good for the rivalry, bad for the Rangers.

Brad Marchand
Marchand is the ultimate player who you hate to watch your team play against, but would love if he were on your team. He’s dirty and annoying, he’s a pest and nuisance, but he’s really good. He makes up one-third of the Bruins’ “Perfection Line” and the Bruins go as that line goes, and after a trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018-19 and a first-place standing in the Atlantic last season, that line has never slowed down. Now, the Rangers will have to see that line for one-seventh of their regular-season schedule. Eight games against the Bruins makes isn’t ideal.

Marchand might have been on this team solely for what he does with the puck because he’s that talented, but it’s what he does without the puck that solidified his roster spot. His lapses in judgment and total disregard for player safety whether it’s unnecessary hits to the head or irresponsible slew foots have made him universally disliked in the entire hockey world outside of Boston. I don’t envision a scenario where Marchand is in the league and isn’t on this team.

Alexander Ovechkin
In his career, Ovechkin has 35 goals in 59 regular-season games against the Rangers and another 13 goals in 33 playoff games across five postseason series, with four of those series going seven games. He’s the ultimate “When is his shift going to end?” and “Get the puck out of the zone” player there is and when he’s waiting at the top of the circles on the power play, two minutes feels like 20 minutes.

I keep waiting for Ovechkin to slow down, thinking age or games played might start to catch up to him, but in his age 34 season he led the league in scoring with 48 goals and was on a 58-goal pace before the season was shut down. I do respect his ability and do appreciate that I’m watching greatness and a generational talent and arguably the best goal scorer in the history of the game, that just doesn’t take away how I feel when he’s playing the Rangers.

DEFENSEMEN

Zdeno Chara
Chara is no longer a Bruin, but the Rangers will still see him plenty now that he’s a Capital. The animosity will only increase because of his change of teams.

It’s weird to think the Bruins will retire Chara’s number one day considering the team they were when they signed him and the team they eventually became. When Chara arrived in Boston, It felt like it would be at least another three decades until the Bruins won again, but after winning the Cup and reaching the Final two other times in a nine-year period, Chara was staple for the Bruins and an exemplary captain of the team for 15 years (though I have always felt as though Patrice Bergeron deserved to wear the “C” all those years).

Chara isn’t close to being the player he once was and appears to be a liability on the ice more times than not, but he’s not once again on this team for the player he is, but the player he was.

Andy Greene
To be honest, I don’t dislike Greene. In fact, I don’t have any positive or negative feelings about him. But this roster needed a representative from the Devils last season, and who was better to fill that role than their captain? Greene is no longer with the Devils, but he’s with the Islanders, and going from one Rangers rival to another made him an easy pick on this team’s blue line.

The Devils were a mess last season, and that led to them moving Greene. After winning the lottery for the second time in three years, acquiring P.K. Subban and signing Wayne Simmonds, the Devils looked at worst to be a bubble team for the postseason. The only thing they ended up on the bubble for was winning the draft lottery again. The Devils have the pieces in place to rebound in this shortened season, but let’s hope that’s not the case. The Rangers newly-aligned division is hard enough.

GOALIE

Braden Holtby
For years I only had to worry about picking the forwards and defensemen for this team because I knew Martin Brodeur would be the goalie. Holtby is in no way as easy of a choice for this spot as Brodeur was, but he has still earned it. Normally, I dislike a player because of their performance against one of my teams, but Holtby has only won 14 of 26 regular-season games against the Rangers and has lost all three postseason series to them, including three Game 7s.

The reason I have never liked him is mostly not his fault. It’s not his fault he has been perceived in past seasons to be better than Henrik Lundqvist despite having a much, much better team in front of him, and it’s not his fault that his much, much better team helped him win the Stanley Cup, while Lundqvist’s prime was wasted with a disastrous defense and poor roster construction and he will most likely retire having never won the Cup.

Holtby is now in Vancouer, so the animosity for him will go away. For now, there’s no better option, but there will be for next year.

Aug 4, 2020

Rangers-Hurricanes Game 2 Thoughts: The Brink of Elimination

After waiting for Rangers hockey for more than four months, it might leave as quickly as it returned. For the second straight game, the Rangers were thoroughly outplayed by the Hurricanes and now the Rangers will play for their season on Tuesday night.

That didn’t take long. After waiting for Rangers hockey for more than four months, it might leave as quickly as it returned. For the second straight game, the Rangers were thoroughly outplayed by the Hurricanes and now the Rangers will play for their season on Tuesday night.

The Rangers were able to keep the Hurricanes off the board for a little longer in Game 2, this time for four minutes and 32 seconds before Andrei Svechnikov scored his first of three goals for his first career hattrick. Artemi Panarin tied the game at 1 a little more than seven minutes later on a 5-on-3 (if the Rangers didn’t score on a 5-on-3 I might have lost my TV), but that was it for the Rangers’ scoring for the afternoon.

Two minutes and 22 seconds in the second, the Hurricanes had a 3-1 lead and the two-goal deficit seemed more like seven goals. The Rangers’ lack of possession kept them from creating quality scoring chances and when they did get a decent shot on Petr Mrazek, it was Brett Howden or Brendan Smith taking the shot. Somehow, the Rangers have made Mrazek look how Henrik Lundqvist looked at Mrazek’s age.

Lundqvist was good once again. Four goals against might have you thinking differently if you missed the matinee, but the same old adage held true in the Lundqvist era: it could have been a lot worse. The only goal of the four Lundqvist had a chance on was Svechnikov’s first, which found its way through Lundqvist’s right arm. The other three weren’t getting stopped by Lundqvist or Igor Shesterkin or anyone.

Lundqvist should be in the net again in Game 3. Even if you discount what he’s done for the last 15 years (which David Quinn likes to do), he’s earned it with his play in this series. It would be risky to turn to Shesterkin now when he’s been in street clothes for both games and hasn’t seen game action since March. If Game 3 is Lundqvist’s last game as a Ranger or if Game 2 was, it would be fitting for him to go out the way every Rangers team he’s been a part of has gone out: with him trying to single-handedly carry the team to victory.

The Rangers’ winning history over the Hurricanes and Lundqvist’s winning history over the Hurricanes will come to an end unless the Rangers are able to win three straight, and they are capable of winning three straight against this Hurricanes team. During the regular season, they won three straight against much better competition, but it might be too late for the Rangers to find their January, February and March play that got them into this qualifying round.

The undefeated 4-0 mark against the Hurricanes this season was a facade. In those four games, the Rangers were outplayed like they’ve been outplayed in Games 1 and 2, outshot 161-104 by the Hurricanes in the regular season and had a worse expected goals total in three of the four games. The Rangers didn’t deserve to win two of those games, let alone four, and they haven’t deserved to win either of these two qualifying games, scoring just three goals in six periods.

In Game 2, Quinn lacked the urgency he has lacked all season, waiting too long to pair Panarin with Mika Zibanejad, and too long to put out forward combinations to give the Rangers the best chance to score. With the defense playing as badly as it has in Games 1 and 2, it would seem ill-advised to wait around for the Rangers to trail in Game 3 before pairing the two stars together. Quinn needs to manage his roster with urgency from the opening shift or it will be the last opening shift the Rangers have this season.

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Aug 2, 2020

Rangers-Hurricanes Game 1 Thoughts: Henrik Lundqvist Still Can’t Score in the Postseason

The Rangers lost Game 1 to the Hurricanes after being thoroughly outplayed. Henrik Lundqvist did all he could, but I’m sure to many it wasn’t enough.

You could take Saturday’s Rangers game and insert it into any of the last 15 Rangers seasons and it would fit seamlessly. A Rangers postseason game in which the team is thoroughly dominated, needs Henrik Lundqvist to stand on his head to have a chance and attemps a comeback a little too late? It was a game straight out of the Rangers’ post-lockout era, and unfortunately, it came against a team they have grown accustomed to beating, and a team they should beat.

In the first minute of Game 1 of the Rangers’ Stanley Cup qualifying series against the Hurricanes, Jesper Fast took a big hit from former teammate Brady Skjei. It was a big enough hit that Fast, arguably the Rangers’ best defensive player, was lost on the ice for the remainder of his shift. Most likely concussed from the hit, Fast stayed on the ice long enough to find his way back into the defensive zone where he stayed flat-footed because of his head injury and never thought to watch for or pick up Jacob Slavin joining the forecheck by creating a backdoor lane to the net. A cross-zone pass to Slavin and a perfect shot over Lundqvist’s right shoulder gave the Hurricanes a 1-0 just 61 seconds into the game. Fast never returned.

The game was officiated like a September preseason game in which the league is trying to display how infractions will be called for the upcoming season. And while there hasn’t been hockey in nearly four months and we are much closer to the start of a new season than we normally are to a postseason, calling 16 minor penalities in a playoff game is simply absurd. The entire first two periods were played with special teams and the more penalties the Rangers took, the more Artemi Panarin sat on the bench. And the more he sat on the bench, the more ice time Brett Howden and Greg McKegg received.

Like the regular season, it wasn’t until the Rangers’ chance of winning was approaching impossible that David Quinn began to make line decisions with urgency. It wasn’t until the Rangers trailed by two goals with about two minutes to go in the game that he finally gave in to putting Panarin and Mika Zibanejad on the ice together to kill a penalty and try to create offense. The desperation move from Quinn paid off as the two were able to control the puck in the Hurricanes’ zone and both assist on the Rangers’ second goal from the unlikely stick of Marc Staal.

The Rangers played the way they played for the first half of the regular season, abandoning the style of play that led to them going on the type of run needed to now be part of the 24-team tournament. Their play was chaotic in the first period as they let the Hurricanes dominate possession, and if not for Lundqvist, the game would have been over before the first intermission. Unfortunately, I can see Quinn going to Igor Shesterkin in Game 2 on Sunday, even though Lundqvist earned the right to play and deserves to play the next game after his performance in Game 1. But like the faction of fans who probably think the three goals against were Lundqvist’s fault and he’s the reason the team is already down in the best-of-5 series, Quinn will say the team needs a spark and he’ll go to Shesterkin. It’s illogical and unfair, but it’s the way Quinn makes decisions. The same way he thinks Howden or McKegg are better options than Panarin or Zibanejad at any point in a hockey game.

After going 4-0 against the Hurricanes this season, the Hurricanes finally solved the Rangers. Or at least they finally held on against the Rangers. Game 1 was nearly identical to most of the Rangers-Hurricanes games this season with the Rangers getting thoroughly outplayes. The only difference was the final score. In the regular season, the Rangers were always able to get even better goaltending than they did on Saturday and they were always able to find the net when they needed to. Without Lundqvist somehow playing better than he did, which might not have been humanly possible, and without puck luck, the Rangers experienced the fate they were able to avoid against Carolina earlier this year.

The Rangers need to win Game 2. They don’t have to win Game 2, though if they don’t, their season will be on the brink of elimation. The five-month wait for Rangers hockey can’t only last a few days, but if the Rangers continue to play like they did on Saturday, it will.

Podcasts • Rangers

Mar 11, 2020

Rangers Podcast: Fix the NHL Point System

Neil Paine of Five Thirty Eight joined me to talk about improving the NHL’s current point system.

If the NHL was based simply on wins and losses, the Rangers would currently hold a postseason spot. If the league awarded three points for a regulation win, two points for an overtime or shootout win and one point for an overtime or shootout loss, the Rangers would currently hold a postseason spot. Unfortunately, the NHL rewards teams who fail to win in regulation and are able to rack up loser points throughout the regular season, and because of this, the Rangers will most likely miss the playoffs.

Neil Paine of Five Thirty Eight joined me to talk about his recent Rangers-related playoff point article, how the Rangers’ lack of overtime and shootout play has hurt their playoff chance and ways the NHL can improve their current point system and overtime format.

Blogs • Rangers

Mar 6, 2020

Rangers Need to Screw Line Balance, Play Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad Together All the Time

Screw line balance. Give me a Rangers super line the way the Bruins and Avalanche do business. Give me Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad together all the time.

The Rangers had to win on Thursday night against the Capitals. They had to. Not only because they had four one-goal leads in the game and blew all of them, but because they had lost three straight, were watching their postseason odds rapidly decline and desperately needed to pick up two points for the first time in a week. With the Islanders on their way to an unaccetpable loss in Ottawa and the Hurricanes in Philadelphia at the worst possible time, a Rangers win over Washington would begin to undo the damage the Flyers and Blues had done to the Rangers over the last six days.

It’s hard to ever feel confident about the Rangers’ chances against the Capitals. Even in recent years when the Rangers were going to Eastern Conference finals and the Stanley Cup Final and eliminating the Capitals from the postseason in three Game 7s over four years, I never felt good about the Rangers playing them. Now in a rebuilding season, in which the Rangers have the youngest roster in the league and the Capitals have the oldest, it’s even harder to envision the Rangers doing enough for 60 minutes to beat them. Unless Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad get significant playing time together.

I have wanted the Rangers’ two best players on the same line all season. Screw line balance. Give me a super line the way the Bruins and Avalanche do business. Give me Panarin and Zibanejad together and the third linemate doesn’t matter. If Panarin could do what he has done with Ryan Strome and Jesper Fast as his linemates, putting anyone out there alongside Panarin and Zibanejad wouldn’t matter. You could put Greg McKegg out there with them and get production. You could put Micheal Haley out there with them and get production. That’s how good the two are together.

The problem is David Quinn strongly believes in line balance. He only turns to the dynamic duo in the event of an emergency, like the Rangers trailing by a goal with a few minutes left in the game. Usually by then, it’s too late and had the two been together all game, the Rangers likely wouldn’t be trailing by a goal with a few mintues left. Quinn treats pairing the two as if there is a limit on how often and for how long he can do it, and as of now there are only three situations Quinn purposely has the two on the ice at the same: the Rangers are trailing in the third period, the Rangers are on the power play or it’s overtime. Thankfully, on Thursday against the Capitals, the Rangers had six power plays, so the two could play significant minutes together, and thankfully, the Rangers were able to gain possession in ovetime.

Zibanejad became the third Ranger in history to score five goals in game in the Rangers’ 6-5 overtime win over the Capitals, scoring in every period and overtime. Panarin finished the game with three assists, all primary, with two of them on Zibanejad goals.

The duo either scored or created all six Rangers goals. When the Capitals took a 1-0 lead, the Rangers answered on the power play with Zibanejad deflecting in a Panarin shot. When the game was tied at 1, Zibanejad gave the Rangers the lead. When the game was tied at 2, Panarin sent a beautiful cross-zone pass to Tony DeAngelo to go up 3-2. When the game was tied at 3, Zibanejad scored again. When the game was tied at 4, Zibanejad again. When the game was tied at 5 in overtime, Zibanejad from Panarin.

The necessary presence of the two in the lineup this season can’t be overstated. When Zibanejad missed time early in the season, the Rangers endured a lengthy losing streak. When Panarin missed his only game of the season against the Islanders, the Rangers suffered their only loss in four games to the Islanders. Had the Rangers not lost Zibanejad early on and had the Rangers had Panarin for what ended up being a detrimental four-point swing in favor of the Islanders, it would be the Rangers holding off teams chasing them in the postseason race, rather than the Rangers doing the chasing.

Panarin is on pace for a 114-point season, while Zibanejad is scoring at a 58-goal pace over 82 games. Panarin eclipsed his single-season high in points when there was still six weeks left in the season, and Zibanejad is only three points away from tying his single-season high in points in 26 games fewer games. Playoffs or not, Panarin is still the MVP of the league and rightful Hart Trophy winner this season to me, but there is a strong case to be made for Zibanejad as well. I’ll take co-MVPs.

The Rangers needed a win, and their two best players delivered them one. The duo is going to need to deliver a lot more of them over the next four weeks. With 15 games remaining, the Rangers will have to win at least 10 to have a chance, and even then, it might not be enough for a wild-card berth. I keep waiting for other players to step up and carry the Rangers for a game or two under the idea that it can’t be Panarin and Zibanejad every game, but so far it has been them every game the Rangers win.

Thankfully, the Rangers have at least two more seasons of these two playing together. I just wish they would play together all the time and not only in three situations they’re “allowed” to.