What We Learned: How do you fix the NY Rangers?
The problems with the New York Rangers were evident, in the last few years, to anyone who paid attention.
The defense wasn’t very good and seemingly worsening every year. The forward depth wasn’t being utilized in a particularly helpful way. Money was allocated seemingly at random, or at least based on deeply outmoded thinking. The cupboards were nearly bare from having routinely raided in pursuit of keeping the club competitive. The lineups on any given night were typically suboptimal.
That was certainly the case Saturday in the 6-3 drubbing at the hands of a significantly superior Pittsburgh Penguins club.
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Just about the only thing the Rangers had going for them, and it was a thing so valuable as to render a big chunk of the above-listed problems inconsequential, was Henrik Lundqvist. And things were so bad in the last week and a half that even Lundqvist was pulled THREE times in this series.
But now, after Saturday’s Game 5 bounce-out at the hands of the rejuvenated Penguins, all those faults are laid bare, if they weren’t already. And that means so very difficult and probably costly decisions have to be made.
The Rangers spent this season very much capped-out, and even dealt more futures — top prospect Aleksi Saarela and a pair of second-round picks — to get a guy who ended up being their deadline bust of a No. 3 center. More worrisome is that they already have more than $55 million committed to only 13 players and have multiple potentially pricey RFAs (Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes, J.T. Miller) who need to be re-signed.
But when you think about what’s wrong with this club, in all honestly, the first thing you have to consider is the defense. This year the Rangers spent nearly $27.5 million on an absolute mess of a blue line, with the most obvious problem being $11.2 million going to just Marc Staal and Dan Girardi alone.
The first and most obvious step toward mitigating the team’s cap problems for next season is to find some sucker to take Girardi off your hands with salary retained; or, failing that, buy him out. But considering he has a no-move clause for the next two years, the buyout is probably your only option.
Girardi has four years left on his current deal (good lord!), meaning you’d be paying a lot of money in 2018-19 and 2019-20 to not-play him for the next eight years. It’s undoubtedly worth it. The fact is that even at half the cap hit for twice as many years, you can probably find a defenseman to go at the bottom of your lineup for $1 million and you’re not going to bleed goals. This is exactly what people mean when they talk about addition by subtraction; his position with this team, and probably in the NHL, is no longer tenable.
Staal is a tougher case because it’s difficult to evaluate his efficacy in preventing goals due to his continual pairing alongside Girardi. However, even if you think he’d be good sans the boat anchor sharing the ice with him, you have to also to say the contract is not commensurate with his capabilities. If someone’s interested, you gotta deal him as well.
Two other problems on the blue line, one manufactured and one very real, are possibly going to complicate things further. Keith Yandle and Dan Boyle are both in the final years of their deals and unlikely to be brought back: Boyle because he’s 39 and looking more like it every single day, and Yandle because things never really worked for him on Broadway, for whatever reason.
Well, not whatever reason. He was misused by coach Alain Vigneault more or less from the day the team gave up Anthony Duclair, John Moore, this year’s first-round pick, and last year’s second for him; more of that cupboard raiding mentioned earlier. Yandle will go elsewhere this summer, and some team is probably going to be happy to have him. The Rangers should lament taking his offensive talents for granted.
As to the problems up front, well, the discussion kind of begins and ends with “Mats Zuccarello led them in scoring this year.” Zuccarello is a very good player and everything, but if you think he should be second on any legitimate semi-contending team in both goals and assists, you’re suffering from Jeff Gorton Disease.
The issue in attack for the Rangers is that they have a bunch of players who are pretty good and none who are super-impactful. Derek Stepan makes $6.5 million against the cap, and has career highs of 22 goals and 57 points. That’s worrisome. Rick Nash has an AAV of $7.8 million and both cannot stay healthy and cannot score in quite the same way he could in the past. “Trade Nash” rumblings have been around for a while, and one wonders if we don’t see that come to fruition this summer. Stepan obviously isn’t going anywhere.
But another big part of the problem has been Vigneault. Tanner Glass got into 57 games in the regular season and the first four playoff dates as well. The number he should be playing for any NHL team is a hell of a lot closer to zero. And guys he was scratching to get Glass more ice time included the aforementioned Hayes, who looks a hell of a lot like a guy who would score 30 given a change of scenery or a new coach. The odds he gets one or the other this summer seem pretty high.
This is a talent evaluation problem, and I don’t know how that gets addressed either behind the bench or in the GM’s office without handing out pink slips.
And the big issue for the team is that they’ve never been particularly good apart from Lundqvist, regardless of what anyone thinks. Their peak as this iteration of the club was undoubtedly in 2013-14, when they were better than 52 percent in score-adjusted possession. But even still, that number was only seventh in the league.
Lundqvist has always been the great leveler. Reasons Nos. 1 through 500 the Rangers went to the conference final or beyond three times in a five-year stretch is that Lundqvist is a generational, Hall-of-Fame talent who was so good he could will teams of just about any actual quality that far. Reason No. 1 why that was as far as they ever got was that the team in front of him was never good enough to compete with truly elite teams. The fact that he didn’t win a Cup with this team, and now — given that he’s 34 — it’s fair to say he might never do so, is a shame. The people who have run the Rangers during that time should feel very bad about what they did to this exceptional talent.
In a lot of ways, the decision to yank him, again, when you’re down 6-2 in Game 5 of a series in which you were almost laughably overmatched by a team that twice started its third-string goalie is fitting. It showed Vigneault and the Rangers writ large are just out of answers. When not even Lundqvist is saving you from getting pantsed on network TV, it’s time to have a good, long look in the mirror and really study every contour of your many flaws flaws.
The problems are so considerable here that there’s no one way to address them. You could try to tear it down to the studs, I guess, but we all know that isn’t going to happen for a number of reasons.
Maybe the best way to deal with all this is to start by apologizing to Lundqvist for wasting another Vezina-worthy season with whatever this roster was supposed to be.
What We Learned
Anaheim Ducks: This is starting to look very scary, and very middle-of-the-season familiar.
Arizona Coyotes: This is going to be a very fun thing to hear about for the next few years. Arizona taxpayers aren’t on the hook for nearly enough arenas these days.
Boston Bruins: This is an absolutely spectacular take.
Buffalo Sabres: How much bigger do you think a year gets than last year’s excellent performance from future Masterton winger Ryan O’Reilly?
Calgary Flames: The Flames have to re-sign Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau this summer. That’ll get expensive in a hurry.
Carolina Hurricanes: Just a bit of housekeeping for the ‘Canes before they have to start making more difficult decisions in a few weeks.
Chicago: Ahh jeez, it’s happening again.
Colorado Avalanche: It’s happening, folks. Radulov to the Avs. That’ll solve all their quote-unquote leadership problems. Why not bring Alex Semin back too?
Columbus Blue Jackets: Well at least someone in this franchise is winning meaningful games.
Dallas Stars: “Now?”
Detroit Red Wings: If only a nice smart boy had been saying this for two or three years.
Edmonton Oilers: A beautiful point by the wonderful Jonathan Willis here: Maybe Ales Hemsky appeared to suck in Edmonton because the team around him was trash. Just a thought, folks!
Florida Panthers: Friday’s double-OT game, like the series as a whole, was super-duper fun.
Los Angeles Kings: Hate to disagree here but maybe if Jonathan Quick had, like, more than one good game in the first round, we wouldn’t be sitting here.
Minnesota Wild: All blessings to the legend.
Montreal Canadiens: Well, 47 percent of Quebec residents say they’re “depressed” about how bad the Habs were this year. That’s not good.
Nashville Predators: If Mike Ribeiro ends up being a big reason Nashville loses in the first round, well, all involved had that coming.
New Jersey Devils: Yeah the Devils pulled off a classic pump-and-dump on Lee Stempniak, who they got for basically nothing.
New York Islanders: What if Thomas Greiss is actually a good goalie? How does that impact the franchise’s decision-making going forward?
New York Rangers: Yeah like I said, the Rangers are pretty damn bad and now hopefully they figure it out.
Ottawa Senators: Legendarily bad take alert: “Whatever coach Dorion hires, his biggest task will be to get Erik Karlsson on board with the way the team has to play to achieve success.” Maybe you tailor your team so that a generational talent can find success, and not the other way around. Remember when Alex Ovechkin had to block shots? Yeah.
Philadelphia Flyers: This would be pretty dumb, except it’s hard to throw a t-shirt on the ice from the balcony.
Pittsburgh Penguins: Phil Kessel is a beautiful friend who so good and nice.
San Jose Sharks: Hmm, no.
St. Louis Blues: Hmm do you really think so?
Tampa Bay Lightning: Yeah I also wouldn’t expect quite so easy a ride in the second round.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Mitch Marner could end up being a monster scorer in the NHL. He’s been shredding the OHL for two years,
Vancouver Canucks: Thatcher Demko is really good. I’d guess one AHL year and then straight to the big time.
Washington Capitals: Reminder that faceoffs have no impact on winning and losing any single game.
Winnipeg Jets: Ah jeez we’re talking about this for every non-playoff team huh?
Play of the Weekend
Yo this is freakin’ Dale Weise picking out a corner on Brian Elliott. Yeeeeeesh what a shot.
Gold Star Award
All my love and respect goes to Martin Jones this week, who very quietly brought some serious goods (.932) against a very good team.
Minus of the Weekend
Lots of blame to go around this weekend, that’s for sure. But Ken Hitchcock might, I don’t know, want to make like one in-game adjustment during this series. Just saying. Not trying to be a backseat driver here but this isn’t going well for yung.
Perfect HFBoards Trade Proposal of the Year
User “Jaynki” may have come up with the Platonic ideal of a trade proposal.
Price, Plekanec, Emelin
Vs
Toews
Crawford
Signoff
Slow down, sir! You’re going to give yourself skin failure.
Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
(All stats via War On Ice unless otherwise noted.)
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