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Tag: Alain Vigneault

Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoff Thoughts • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 30, 2014

Rangers-Flyers Game 6 Thoughts: It’s Never Easy

The Rangers will play in another Game 7 after their embarrassing effort in Philadelphia with a chance to eliminate the Flyers.

New York Rangers at Philadelphia Flyers

Two periods was enough. I couldn’t take any more Rangers hockey in Game 6 after the embarrassing performance and effort put on in the first 40 minutes. So I turned the game off. The only problem was CC Sabathia was busy blowing another lead (this time to the worst offense in baseball in the Mariners), so I was forced back to the Rangers, hoping that they would pull off a Bruins-like comeback from last year’s Game 7 against the Maple Leafs.

The Rangers have now lost 12 consecutive games when leading in a series and after dominating the first period in Game 6, they came out for a Sunday skate in the second period and a one-goal deficit quickly got out of hand. Now one game stands between the Rangers and the Penguins and the Rangers and the offseason. There’s a chance on Wednesday night, the hate-watching of the playoffs will begin for me with the next Rangers game not for over five months. With that notion and the notion that finality will be in the Garden for both teams on Wednesday, I don’t feel well enough to put together Thoughts on Game 6, but I will.

– Ladies and gentlemen, Dan Girardi! If you thought giving Girardi a six-year, $33 million extension was a bad idea then you must have had a fun time watching Game 6. Girardi was an embarrassment on defense watching plays develop in front of him and then letting players get behind him with little to no effort trying to clear out the front of the net. After Girardi’s disastrous Game 2 and now Game 6, he has been every bit as bad in this series as he was a year ago against the Bruins in the five-game loss. And aside from a few weeks during the post-Olympic break, Girardi has now been playing poorly consistently for an entire calendar year. For as good as Ryan McDonagh has been, imagine how good he might look if anyone other than Girardi was his defensive partner. Well, if his defensive partner were anybody other than …

– Ladies and gentlemen, Anton Stralman! If you’re Raphael Diaz and you keep getting scratched for Anton Stalman, how are you not showing up to playoff games drunk wearing a Flyers jersey? We are well past the point with Stralman where you have to point out when he does something good to justify his presence in the lineup and we are at the point where he can no longer dress for games. He is the biggest defensive liability on the team, which is saying a lot about a team that also has Dan Girardi and John Moore, and he provides zero offense (he now has one goal and 13 assists in 87 games this year). Alain Vigneault doesn’t need to scratch Anton Stralman for Game 7, he has to.

– I’m tired of hearing about Derek Stepan. Unless he’s sitting on the doorstep or the far post wide open on the power play and the puck is placed perfectly on his tape, he isn’t scoring. He has been soft on the puck for the entire series, has made horrible decisions at the blue line trying to create offense and has been unable to capitalize on what should be freebies. Then again, it’s not like he has missed as many opportunities as …

– Benoit Pouliot. When the Rangers signed Benoit Pouliot, my former college roommate and Bruins beat writer for The Hockey Writers Mike Miccoli told me, “He has 39 scoring chances a game and never scores then takes stupid penalties.” It was the most spot-on scouting report I have ever heard of a player in any sport. It’s incredible to think Pouliot has never scored more than 16 goals in an NHL season when you watch how many high-quality chances he has every game, but with the way he handles open looks in the slot, he never will score 20 goals in the NHL.

– Rick Nash isn’t Alex Rodriguez. He’s not even Mark Teixeira or Robinson Cano and certainly not Nick Swisher. He’s a player who just happens to have played six playoff game this year and has no goals and four assists. And even without Nash scoring a goal, the Rangers are one win away from advancing to the conference semifinals and hockey’s Elite Eight and playing the Penguins. But on Wednesday night at the Garden, the Rangers need Nash. They need Rick Nash to be the player I was willing to give up the farm for at the 2012 deadline and the player they traded for the following summer. If Nash doesn’t score in Game 7 and the Rangers don’t advance, he should be prepared for the criticism that will come with going goalless in a seven-game series against the hated Flyers. He will have earned it.

– Henrik Lundqvist is one loss away from having his ability to win in the playoffs called into question again. As ridiculous as it is, especially after Game 6 when he was hung out to dry, it’s going to happen. Non-Rangers fans love nothing more than to spit out the lazy idea that Lundqvist is a different goalie in the postseason than he is in the regular season even though the numbers prove he is the exact same and that it’s more about the Rangers even worse inability to score in Games 83 and beyond. Lundqvist still hasn’t stolen a game like I said he would at some point in this series and now he only has one chance left to do it. If the Rangers win Game 7 without Lundqvist stealing it then that means the offense carried the team to the second round and I can’t see that happening after the last two games. Henrik Lundqvist needs to close out the Flyers single-handedly or at least go into Game 7 thinking he needs to.

I really believed this postseason would be different. I really believed the Rangers would make quick work of the Flyers (I predicted the Rangers would win in five games). I really believed the Rangers would advance to the conference semis without facing elimination. But here we are. The Rangers are in the same place they were a year ago and the year before that and three years before that. Game 7 in the first round. Nothing is ever easy with the Rangers. Nothing.

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Blogs • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 16, 2014

Rangers-Flyers Has ‘The Feel’

I got my wish and the Rangers will play the Flyers in the playoffs for the first time since the 1996-97 conference finals, but this time things will end differently for the Blueshirts.

I can’t believe it’s been 28 weeks since I was turning on MSG for the first time in months to watch the Rangers open the season in Phoenix on Oct. 3. And I can’t believe it’s been nearly just as long since I was turning off MSG and thinking about not turning it on again this season after the Rangers were embarrassed 9-2 by the Sharks on Oct. 8.

The Rangers started the season with their third and final season-opening extended road trip and went 3-6-0, getting outscored 33-15 in the process with Alain Vigneault’s offensive system heavily criticized. They returned to New York for their home opener on Oct. 29 and were shut out 2-0 by the Canadiens and after almost a month of hockey found themselves in last place. But they quickly turned it around, going 6-1-0 between Oct. 29 and Nov. 10 and looked like the Real Rangers and the team we expected to see in 2013-14 (and the team we expected to see in 2012-13 for that matter).

Following Henrik Lundqvist’s extension in the first week of December, the Rangers went into another slump, going 0-3-1 from Dec. 7 to Dec. 12, before beating the Flames in a shootout at the Garden on Dec. 15 for their first two-point game in 10 days. After that win, they went on a 16-7-2 tear until the Olympic break, winning in Chicago against the defending champions and sweeping the Stadium Series along the way.

They returned from their 20-day break with heavy rumors of a potential Ryan Callahan trade surrounding the team and after three post-break games, Callahan was gone and Martin St. Louis was a Ranger after what evolved into a mandatory move for Glen Sather. The Rangers became a better team with St. Louis, but still entered the final 10 games of the season not knowing if they would play an 83rd game this season.

Following the 1-0 loss to the Sharks, on March 16, which was part of a 1-3-0 stretch from March 11-16, I wasn’t sure if we would be here. I wasn’t sure if I would be watching Rangers playoff hockey this year or hate-watching the playoffs and simply watching because it’s playoff hockey and not because I cared who won or lost during the best time of the year. But here we are. After 82 games and highs and lows and winning streaks that not even Mike McDermott could have handled or losing streaks that not even Joey Knish could have helped dig Rangers fans out of, here we are on the eve of the postseason and the eve of the first Rangers-Flyers playoff series since the 1996-97 Eastern Conference finals.

I didn’t want the Rangers to play the Flyers in the first round, I needed the Rangers to play the Flyers in the first round. After seeing the Capitals in the first round in 2012-13, 2010-11 and 2008-09 (and the conference semis in 2011-12), I didn’t need something different in the postseason just for the sake of watching something different, I needed something different because it’s the Flyers and because Rangers-Flyers still has “the feel” of something special in an age where “the feel” is hard to find. It’s hard to describe what “the feel” is when it comes to a rivalry, whether or old of new, but you know it when you have it the way Rangers-Devils has had it and Rangers-Islanders use to have it and Bruins-Canadiens has always had it and Bruins-Canucks built it. And if Rangers-Flyers can continually give you “the feel” in the regular season after 17 years without a playoff series, imagine what it could do in a playoff series after such a drought. That’s why I needed this series to happen.

I thought after the 2007 ALDS when I wanted nothing more than the Yankees to face the Indians, I would have finally learned the “be careful what you wish for” lesson, but I apparently haven’t in asking for the Rangers to face the Flyers. I wanted no part of the Blue Jackets or the Columbus Rangers because of their 2011-12 Rangers feel (not because of their roster, but because of the way they win) and Sergei Bobrovsky. They have changed the image of what the Blue Jackets have represented since entering the league in 2000 and making just their second playoff appearance, they would have been a tough out for anyone and that includes the Penguins, who they will face. I got my wish. I got Rangers-Flyers and I can only hope it turns into Rangers-Penguins or Rangers-Blue Jackets a couple weeks from now and the hockey season continues for more than just a week or two.

I didn’t feel this good about the Rangers entering the playoffs two years ago when they were the No. 1 seed coming off a 51-win and 109-point season and with Henrik Lundqvist posting fake life numbers. But two years ago, the Rangers’ path to the Stanley Cup Final was paved like the New York Football Giants’ path to Super Bowl XLVI once the Saints were eliminated because the Bruins and Penguins were eliminated in the first round and the Flyers were gone in the second. I thought the stars had aligned with the Rangers facing the Devils in the conference finals, but the Rangers’ scoring inconsistencies (and lack of trading for Rick Nash at the deadline) were finally too much to overcome once the ridiculous bounces stopped going their way (and they still got a lot of ridiculous bounces to go their way in the six games).

On this Stanley Cup Playoffs Eve, I feel as good as I could possibly feel about the Rangers and that’s not necessarily a good thing. But like the Giants, the Rangers don’t perform well with expectations or with hype or with a bandwagon that’s gaining steam. They were embarrassed by the Bruins in the conference semis last May after everyone picked the Rangers to win the series, they couldn’t get past what seemed to be an inferior 6-seeded Devils team the year before despite being a 1-seed, the year before that they clinched the 8-seed in Game 82, the year before that they missed out on the playoffs with a Game 82 shootout loss and the year before that were an 8-seed and blew a 3-1 series lead in the first round. Nothing has ever come easy with the Rangers and I don’t expect this spring to be any different, but maybe it’s better that way.

I was 10 years old and in fifth grade for the 1996-97 conference finals when the Rangers were easily handled by the Flyers in five games. This time, 17 years later, I think it will go five games once again.

Rangers in five.

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Podcasts • Rangers • Rangers Playoffs

Apr 16, 2014

Podcast: Kevin DeLury

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joins me to talk about the Rangers’ first-round matchup with the Flyers and the job Alain Vigneault has done after his first regular season in New York.

After an up-and-down season for the Rangers that had me at times wondering if they would even make the playoffs and other feeling like they could compete with Boston and Pittsburgh, the playoffs are finally here. And after hoping the Rangers would meet the Flyers in the first round for their first playoff series in 17 years, I got my wish with the Rangers and Flyers starting their series on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joined me to talk about the Rangers’ first-round matchup with the Flyers, what Henrik Lundqvist has to do in the playoffs to quiet his critics and how Alain Vigneault has done as head coach after his first regular season in New York.

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Podcasts • Rangers

Mar 28, 2014

Podcast: Kevin DeLury

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joins me to talk about the Rangers’ recent run that has them looking like contenders and why we don’t want but need a Rangers-Flyers playoff series

It hasn’t even been two weeks since I was petrified that the Rangers wouldn’t make the playoffs after their 1-0 loss to the Sharks at MSG. Since that devastating defeat, the Rangers have won five straight, Henrik Lundqvist has found his Vezina form, Ryan McDonagh has done everything except actually stitch the “C” on his jersey and Martin St. Louis has finally scored a goal. OK, so maybe the last part hasn’t happened, but it will. It has to.

The Rangers have provided their usual highs and lows this season, like a six-month Texas hold ’em game, with both emotional swings and standings swings. There have been times when they have made me believe they can compete with the Bruins and Penguins and other times when they have made me feel like an Islanders fan. Their current five-game winning streak has me thinking they can go on an extended playoff run and that scares me because it’s never a good idea to get too high on the Rangers.

Kevin DeLury of The New York Rangers Blog joined me to talk about the Rangers’ recent run that has them looking like contenders, if Martin St. Louis will ever score a goal as a Ranger and why we don’t want but need a Rangers-Flyers playoff series.

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Blogs • Rangers

Mar 24, 2014

The Real Stretch Run for the Rangers

There are 10 games left in the Rangers’ season and the next three weeks will be the difference in the Rangers making the playoffs or in me hate-watching the playoffs this spring.

It seems like just yesterday I turned to the start of the Rangers’ season to console me after the Yankees ended the their season without a trip to the postseason and the Giants were off to an 0-4 start. The Rangers didn’t exactly make me forget about an 85-win Yankees team or a winless Giants team as they lost seven of their first 10 games and were shut out four times in those 10 games. But since that 3-6-0 road trip to open the season and the 2-0 loss to the Canadiens in the home opener in Game 10, the Rangers have been a pretty good team (they are 36-22-4 since the 3-7-0 start).

At times they have made me believe they are capable of competing against the Bruins or Penguins in a seven-game series and at other times they have made me think they will miss the playoffs in a Game 82-shootout setting like they did to finish the 2009-10 season. I have learned not to be surprised by the Rangers over the years and even with a team that rosters Henrik Lundqvist, Rick Nash, Martin St. Louis and Brad Richards, I’m still not surprised by the inconsistent efforts.

After losing back-to-back road games to Carolina and Minnesota (and scoring only one goal in each game), it seemed Rangers fans would have to endure the usual March charades from the Rangers that would force them to play for their season in the final week of the season. With Columbus continuing to win and Philadelphia laughing at the gauntlet portion of their schedule that was supposed to keep them from making a playoff push, the dreaded “Games in hand” phrase that always seems to work against the Rangers at this time of the year began to make its annual appearance on every TV graphic. But over the last five games, the Rangers have looked more like that team that is capable of competing with the Bruins and Penguins and less like the team that let their season come down to an Olli Jokinen shootout attempt.

Three weeks from today the 2013-14 regular season will be over, and three weeks from today there’s a chance the 2013-14 Rangers’ season will be over too. The Rangers have 10 games to earn their way into the playoffs and to make sure I’m not hate-watching the NHL playoffs during my favorite time of the year. In those 10 games, we will get the answer to a few questions I have about the state of the Rangers down the stretch.

Are We in the Middle of One of Rick Nash’s Patented Streaks?
Rick Nash has played 99 regular-season games for the Rangers. He has scored 44 goals in those 99 games. That looks like steady production and without watching him you might think he is a model for consistent goal scoring in the NHL. But while Nash’s final numbers will look the way his final numbers have looked since he entered the league over a decade ago, he is anything but consistent, which makes him the perfect Ranger.

Let’s look at Nash’s 2012-13 regular season:

In seven games from Jan. 19 to Jan. 31, Nash had one goal.

In 12 games from Feb. 2 to March 8, Nash had eight goals.

In eight games from March 10 to March 24, Nash had one goal.

In eight games from March 26 to April 8, Nash had seven goals.

In nine games from April 10 to April 27, Nash had four goals.

And now let’s look at what Nash has done this season:

In 11 games from Nov. 21 to Dec. 10, Nash had six goals.

In 11 games from Dec. 12 Jan. 4, Nash had one goal.

In 11 games from Jan. 6 to Jan. 26, Nash had 11 goals.

In 15 games from Jan. 29 to March 16, Nash had two goals.

In the last three games, Nash has three goals.

Nash has admitted he is a streaky goal scorer and this season, like last, has once again shown that. His 23 goals have come from two 11-game stretches with the rest of them coming in this current three-game streak. Nash scores in spurts and when he does, they aren’t usually in short spurts like three games. They are usually for a couple of weeks. The Rangers need an extended Nash scoring streak that continues through the end of the regular season and into the postseason, which is what didn’t happen last year. (More on that later.)

And how about Nash even deciding to mix it up in his Columbus homecoming? When I told David Singer, founder of HockeyFights.com, on our podcast last week that the Rangers were going to need to get tougher and some Rangers would need to appear on his site in the coming weeks to make the playoffs, I didn’t mean Rick Nash. But Nash has proven to be a leader for this team and it his decision to become one on the ice and the scoresheet couldn’t have come at a better time.

How is Anton Stralman Still in the NHL?
It’s scary to think if John Moore wasn’t currently battling a concussion that Antron Stralman would still be in the lineup. If you’re Raphael Diaz, who is only playing because of Moore’s concussion, you have to be thinking that you’ll never get into a game as long as Moore, Stralman, Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal and Kevin Klein are healthy.

Prior to Moore’s concussion, Stralman was still dressing and still part of the Top 6 defensemen on the team despite doing nothing and I mean actually nothing to earn or deserve to be in the lineup. He has become the new Michael Del Zotto of the Rangers (who is having his own trouble staying in the lineup in Nashville) in that he isn’t an offensive defenseman (or at least he doesn’t produce like one) and he clearly isn’t a defensive defenseman since I would consider him the biggest defensive zone liability in the entire NHL.

Stralman hasn’t looked like an NHL player since the Olympic break and nowhere near the type of player that should be considered for an extension. He hasn’t even been the type of player that should be involved in contract extensions rumors (whether true or false) the way he was a few weeks ago. If Raphael Diaz is back out of the lineup once Moore is back and Stralman doesn’t see the press box for at least one game then there’s a serious problem. And if you see Diaz in line to buy beers between periods at MSG as a healthy scratch, let him know he’s doing the right thing.

Is Martin St. Louis Ever Going to Score?
In 10 games with the Rangers, Martin St. Louis’ production line looks like something Brian Boyle would post: 0-3-3. If you believe in being snake-bitten, then St. Louis is certainly that. And if you believe in being due, then St. Louis is certainly that as well.

During the playoffs last year, the Rangers got past the Capitals in the quarterfinals despite getting just two assists from Rick Nash in seven games. If the Rangers could overcome a 2-0 series deficit and eventually win a Game 7 without their best player scoring a goal, I thought they would be able to make another conference finals appearance and possibly even a Cup appearance once Nash got hot and started scoring, since he would have to get hot and start scoring eventually … right? Wrong. Against the Bruins, Nash had one goal and two assists in the five-game series loss and if it weren’t for Tuukka Rask giving the Rangers the weirdest/craziest goal of all time in Game 4 (and possibly betting against his team in the game), the Rangers would have been swept thanks to a lack of scoring from their pure scorer and too much scoring on his own net from Dan Girardi.

Now even though my theory about Nash eventually getting hot and carrying the Rangers never came to fruition last May, I’m putting it out there again, only this time it’s for St. Louis. At some point, St. Louis is going to get hot and start scoring. His 976 points in 1,051 regular-season games and 68 points in 63 playoff games tell us he’s going to. I just hope his “due” isn’t supposed to come in the playoffs and we never get to experience it because his lack of production over the final 10 games keeps the Rangers out of the playoffs.

Is Henrik Lundqvist Playing for the Rest of the Season?
Before the season, Alain Vigneault said he wanted to keep Henrik Lundqvist to 60 games. Lundqvist has played 55 games so far and that would mean he would only play five of the remaining 10 games, and that’s not going to happen. And I’m fine with it.

Here is how many games Lundqvist has played in each season of his career and how many he didn’t play in:

2012-13: 43/5
2011-12:  62/20
2010-11: 68/14
2009-10: 73/9
2008-09: 70/12
2007-08: 72/10
2006-07: 70/12
2005-06: 53/29

With 10 games left and the Rangers trying to make the playoffs let alone trying to not be a wild-card team, I’m not sure Vigneault can start Cam Talbot until the Rangers have the “x” next to their name in the standings representing a playoff berth has been clinched. And really how can you give Lundqvist a night off when he is 6-2-0 and has allowed just 11 goals in those eight games since March 7?

Maybe when Vigneault said he would try to limit Lundqvist’s starts he thought his Rangers team wouldn’t be fighting for a playoff spot over the final 10 games of the season (if he thought this then he clearly wasn’t in tune with what was going on in New York while he was in Vancouver). But now Vigneault has no choice but to play and ride Lundqvist down the stretch, and in his first season he learned you can’t try to plan ahead for how you will or won’t use Lundqvist over the course of a season.

Once again the Rangers getting to the playoffs will come down to Henrik Lundqvist. I guess I wouldn’t want it any other way since it’s the only way I know.

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