With wins over the Flyers and Capitals, the Rangers prove when they play a complete game, they can beat anyone.
David Quinn finally put Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad together for an entire game and put Alexis Lafrenière with them and the result was a second straight Rangers win. The Rangers have momentarily saved their season with back-to-back wins over the Flyers and Capitals, proving when they play a complete game, they can beat anyone.
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After losing four straight for the second time in just 14 games, the Rangers picked up a 3-2 win in Philadelphia.
After losing four straight for the second time in just 14 games, the Rangers picked up a 3-2 shootout win in Philadelphia, which they desperately needed. It wasn’t pretty, it was most ugly, but the Rangers earned two points they had to have.
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The Rangers won in Philadelphia, but did everything they could to lose, like not scoring on a penalty shot or not scoring during two minutes of a 5-on-3 or not scoring during an overtime power play or by allowing the game-tying goal with 1:14 left in regulation.
The Rangers had to win on Thursday night in Philadelphia. They had to, and they did. It wasn’t pretty, and they did everything they could to lose, like not scoring on a penalty shot or not scoring during two minutes of a 5-on-3 or not scoring during an overtime power play or by allowing the game-tying goal with 1:14 left in regulation. Thankfully, they got two points, and maybe the 3-2 shootout win over the Flyers is the win that turns their season around.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.
1. When the Flyers scored 59 seconds into Wednesday’s game, all I could do was laugh. In the middle of a four-game losing streak and coming off the team’s worst performance of the season, allowing a goal in the opening minute was so predictable it was comical. When the Rangers were shut out in the first period, it wasn’t a surprise, considering how little offense they have generated since their 2-0 loss to the Islanders on Feb. 8.
2. Through the first period in Philadelphia, the Rangers had scored four goals in 13 periods with only one of the goals coming from a top-six forward (Pavel Buchnevich). The Rangers still only managed two goals against the Flyers, so they now have scored six goals in 15 periods. Here are the goal scorers:
Julien Gauthier
Kevin Rooney
Colin Blackwell
Pavel Buchnevich
Colin Blackwell
Brendan Smith
3. When Colin Blackwell is the team’s leading goal scorer over a five-game span, it’s easy to see how the team is 1-3-1 in those five games. As I wrote earlier, Buchnevich is the only top-six forward to have a goal in the last five games or nine percent of the season. Artemi Panarin (5-11-16) and Buchnevich (4-6-10) are the only Rangers to have double-digit points this season, and Panarin leads the team in scoring despite having missed two games.
4. To put the Rangers’ offensive issues in perspective, Connor McDavid (9-23-32) has one less point than the Rangers’ top three scorers (Panarin, Buchnevich and Ryan Strome) combined. McDavid and Leon Draisaitl (10-18-28) have one less goal (19) than Panarin, Buchnevich, Strome, Chris Kreider, Kaapo Kakko and Mika Zibanejad combined (20). McDavid and Draisaitl have as many points combined (60) as Panarin, Buchnevich, Strome, Blackwell, Phil Di Giuseppe, Kreider, Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko, Zibanejad, Brett Howden and Alexis Lafrenière combined.
5. Despite countless chances every game to break out of his goal-scoring slump, Zibanejad is still stuck on one goal this season. One. In 15 games. That’s a four-goal pace in a 56-game season and a six-goal pace in an 82-game season. He’s not the only one though. Kakko has emerged as one the team’s best players in his second season, but he still only has two goals and one assist in 14 games. A 12-point pace in a 56-game season and an 18-point pace in an 82-game season. Lafrenière has one goal. That’s it. No assists. One goal. In 15 games. I didn’t see that coming from the most highly-touted No. 1 overall prospect since McDavid. (To his credit, he hasn’t exactly been paired with the best linemates for the majority of his first NHL season.)
6. The breakaway problem is a huge problem. I don’t know how suddenly become better at breakaways, but the Rangers need to. On both ends of breakaways. Their players can’t score on them and their goalies can’t stop them. It’s been an issue with Chris Kreider for his entire career, and had he been able to score on a few in the Stanley Cup Final against the Kings, the Rangers might have won that series. But it’s not just Kreider. It’s everyone. I have zero confidence in the Rangers scoring on a breakaway and zero confidence Igor Shesterkin or Alexandar Georgiev will stop one. When Pavel Buchnevich had a penalty shot on Thursday, I knew he wasn’t going to score. He put together a much worse attempt than I thought he would, but it didn’t matter, the result was always going to be the same. I was pleasantly surprised though when Georgiev held strong in the shootout. I didn’t see it going that way.
7. After picking former Ranger (I love saying that) Tony DeAngelo as the Rangers’ third shooter in the team’s first shootout against the Penguins earlier this season, David Quinn picked logical shooters this time. (DeAngelo essentially fell on his face in his attempt.) Kakko first and then Panarin with Zibanejad ready as the third shooter, if needed (he wasn’t). That’s more like it. (I would like to know who would have been the fourth shooter if it had gotten there. I would like to think it would have been Lafrenière, but I’m sure it wasn’t. Maybe I don’t want to know who it would have been.)
8. When Libor Hajek and Jack Johnson make up one-third of the team’s defensemen, it’s hard to envision the team winning. Johnson took yet another early first-period penalty (a tripping penalty 2:47 into the game), but otherwise, he wasn’t as bad as he’s been this season (though the bar was set very low). Even if the Flyers weren’t close to full strength because of protocols, it was still an encouraging effort from the defense.
9. The Rangers went 4-7-3 in the first quarter of the season, leaving themselves no margin for extended error for the remaining three quarters of the season. They will have to win two-thirds of the 42 games left, and that means something around a 28-14 record the rest of the way. The win over the Flyers takes it down to 27-14 the rest of the way.
10. I guess the one good thing is the Rangers’ season isn’t over from a playoff berth standpoint despite winning only five of their first 15 games and despite getting basically zero production from the top two lines outside of Panarin, and on occasion Buchnevich. It’s close to being over from a playoff berth standpoint, and another extended losing streak like the two four-game ones they have already had will essentially eliminate them, but it’s not over yet.
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The Rangers are in the middle of their second four-game losing streaks in just 14 games. David Quinn hasn’t done anything this season to prove he’s the right head coach to continue to lead the team.
I have never thought anyone other than David Quinn would be the Rangers’ head coach to begin the 2021-22 season. Even if the Rangers were a last-place team this season, there would be too many excuses available as to why the team was keeping Quinn. There was no training camp. There were no exhibition games. The season started in January. There were only 56 games. The Rangers have the youngest roster in the league. This was always supposed to be the last rebuilding year. There would be an abundance of options for the Rangers to use to protect Quinn. But not if the Rangers play like this.
Being a last-place team with the youngest roster in the league is one thing. Losing the way the Rangers have through the first month of this season is a whole different thing. After losing four consecutive games over the first and second week of the season, the Rangers are currently in their second four-game losing streak of the season. Yes, two separate four-game losing streaks in a season that is 34 days and 14 games old.
The Rangers have lost 10 of their 14 games this season. They have been shut out and blown out, they have pissed away one- and two-goal leads, many of which were in the third period. They have lost in overtime a couple times and in a shootout once. They have lost every way imaginable in less than five weeks, but none of their previous nine losses were as bad as their loss on Tuesday to the Devils at the Garden.
The Devils hadn’t played a game since Jan. 31. They had practiced once since then. They should have been trying to get their legs and knocking off the rust of playing in an actual game, or playing period. Instead, they gave it to the Rangers from the opening puck drop and never let up. Anyone unaware of the Devils’ recent situation would have thought it was the Rangers who hadn’t played at all in February. The difference in plays from the two teams was that apparent.
Rather than take advantage of a Devils team that was essentially restarting their season, the Rangers failed to score in the first period, eventually losing 5-2. Over their last four games, they have scored four goals. The goal scorers: Julien Gauthier, Kevin Rooney and Colin Blackwell and Pavel Buchnevich. One goal from the top two lines.
Yes, the players deserve a lot of the blame for the current 4-7-3 record. Mika Zibanejad has one goal. Chris Kreider has five points. Kaapo Kakko has two goals. Alexis Lafrenière has as many goals (1) as Gauthier who has played in five fewer games and has only played fourth-line minutes in his nine games.
The production hasn’t been there from the names that are supposed to be producing. But a good part of the blame for that falls on Quinn, who frantically changes his lines from shift to shift, seems to not want to properly utilize the 2019 No. 2 overall pick and the 2020 No. 1 overall pick, and seemingly gives out ice time based on seniority rather than talent, skill or ability.
After the loss, a mopey Quinn navigated his way through his postgame press conference with a lost, dejected and at times cocky demeanor. None of his answers gave any insight into how he plans to turn the season around for the second time in a month, and if anything, he made Rangers fans less confident than they already feel that he’s the right man to make the team a contender in the near future.
I decided to analyze Quinn’s postgame press conference answers the way I did after the team’s previous fourth straight loss at the end of January.
On if the loss was an opportunity wasted.
“Any time you play in the NHL you have an opportunity to get two points, regardless of who you are playing and we let another opportunity slip from our hands to get two points. Give them a lot of credit, they played well.”
What insight from Quinn. Thank you for sharing with everyone the objective of the NHL and the goal for every team in every game. At least we now all know he knows how the standings work.
On if effort was an issue in the loss.
“Yeah.”
That’s it. That was his answer. One word. “Effort” is always attached to the coaching staff, and mainly the head coach. So Quinn is implicating the job he has done by admitting to the team lacking the effort needed to beat a team playing a game for the first time in 17 days. You would think if you were admitting to the public that you failed at your job, you would want to give a reason or at least make up some excuse or place the blame elsewhere, but not Quinn. A one-word response was all he needed.
On if the loss was harder because of everything New Jersey has gone through.
“I’m not paying attention to the opponent when we are evaluating our team. I’m just disappointed in some of the things that went on from our end tonight, a drop-off in a lot of areas. Just not good enough.”
If Quinn thinks anyone believes he didn’t know of the Devils’ lack of play in February then he’s more than lost than I originally thought. It would also mean he isn’t aware of the ongoing pandemic or isn’t in tune with the league’s protocols or why he has to wear a mask everywhere he goes (accept when he talks to his players on the bench because he clearly thinks the mask is a fashion accessory and not to keep him and his players safe when’s talking to them).
On how the effort issue be addressed.
“It will be addressed at practice and before practice and after practice and before we play Philly.“
I think Quinn is trying to say he’s going to bag skate the Rangers on Wednesday? That makes a lot of sense because that’s what this team needs: unnecessary, time-wasting sprints. They don’t need to create stable, successful line combinations or work on creating usable power-play units. No, they need to sprint to pay for the loss to the Devils.
It would be a lot easier to back Quinn and believe in him if he gave a reason to. If he were playing Lafrenière the way a No. 1 overall pick should playing or Kakko the way a No. 2 overall pick should be playing, or keeping his line combinations together for more than a few shifts each game, and putting the most talented offensive players on the first power play, and the team was still losing games, then so be it. That could be considered a young, inexperienced team figuring it out. But what’s been going on can’t be considered that. Not when Quinn is clearly trying to win by doing what he thinks will work and it isn’t working. All that shows is that he doesn’t know how to actually win. He’s seems to know how to bench players and hand out healthy scratches as punishment to prove a point. When it comes to actually winning games consistently with a roster that should be winning games consistently, he has yet to prove he knows how to do that.
If this keeps up, the job I thought would be Quinn’s in 2021-22 no matter what won’t be. If this keeps up, his job for the rest of 2021 might not be his either.
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The Rangers have lost 10 of 14 games and have the third-worst winning percentage, ahead of only Detroit and Ottawa.
The Rangers have lost 10 of 14 games and have the third-worst winning percentage in the NHL, ahead of only Detroit and Ottawa. The Rangers have put together two four-game losing streaks in only 14 games, and their season is now 25 percent over.
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