To figure out where the New York Rangers are going after being dumped out on their ass, it's important to retrace how they got here.
The Rangers rebuild is the crux of the team's success this year, but the owner decided he had had enough of it. The way Gorton and Quinn were leading the team meant that they would be canned and there was a lot of discussion about how soft the Rangers were. You would expect a guy like Dolan to overcompensate.
It was ice cream for dumb people. Chris Drury had a track record of success, a track record of burning out everyone around him, and a track record of turning his team into a legion of world-class assholes. Being harder to play against was the main priority on the roster. The Rangers traded for Sammy Blais. Blais only managed 14 games before he got hurt. Blais was able to tie his skates correctly most of the time. When the Rangers came up against one of the league's best and didn't score beyond the top line, they could have used a player like...
Goodrow had never scored more than 26 points in a season and was signed to a six-year deal. He had a 33 point season this year. Any team that signs Ryan Reaves will be disqualified from the playoffs before the season starts.
All of it left the Rangers as a one-line team with a world class goalie, something they had only tried to win with the previous 10 years, and never heard from again.
You can look like a real powerhouse if you only do a few things well. The whole story is usually told by the NBA's Standings. The playoffs will try to get rid of the separation between the wheat and the chaff in baseball. In the NHL, if you have a goalie having a historic season and your power play hits a season long heater, you can fool most of the people.
The Rangers weren't good at what the league's really great teams are. The amount of attempts they take and the amount of attempts they give up were both strong. They were 25th in expected goals percentage. The Rangers had the second best goals- against during the regular season, but it was all down to Shesterkin and the rest of the team. The Rangers scored 19 goals per game. They did not limit chances. Shesterkin wiped out all the things he had seen before him.
They had Chris Kreider shooting 40 percent on the power play, which led to his 52 goals. It is eight percentage points higher than he had before. There was a slight tick up at both evens and on the power play, but nothing that indicates 52 goals will be the norm.
The Rangers were supposed to get secondary scoring for minimum money thanks to their back-to-back top two picks. If he gets five minutes of time and space no more than 20 feet from the net, he has occasionally flashed being a contributor. The Rangers faced elimination last night and Kakko was a scratch. The line was put out like a cigarette by the Lightning.
The Rangers got a lot of mileage from being the youngest team in the playoffs, but progress isn't linear and the path to stardom isn't laid out for any of the other young players Lafreniere has a long way to go before he proves he can create his own shot. It's possible that Kakko is lost. During the playoffs, teams targeted Adam Fox in their own end in order to prove that he was Torey Krug. For every promising rush K'Andre Miller displayed up the ice, he was also getting his brain turned to pudding in his own end. The Rags didn't provide much of a threat because Artemi Panarin circled around the outside offensive zone for an entire shift before trying a pass that bounced off three guys. Panarin scored one of the biggest goals in franchise history in the seventh game against the Pens. One of the most important goals in Rangers history was scored by a Round 1 winner.
The Rangers spent most of the playoffs getting crushed and having Shesterkin pull their ass out of a sling and get some luck. Sidney Crosby had to leave the team when they were on their third-string goalie. The goalie was on the second string.
They saw a real goalie and an opponent that knows what the spring is all about when Jacob Trouba ran out of players. Without their center in Brayden Point, that's the Lightning. The scores may look close, but the Lightning worked the Rangers all over the ice in their four wins in a row. The Rangers expected goals to be 43.3, 40.3 and 34.5. It is getting your ass rubbed in the alcohol.
The Rangers can look and say they were only a couple goals away from upsetting the two-time defending champ, but it's more likely they double down on this ethos. If Fox and Miller continue to need aGPS in their own zone, the percentages will probably reverse on them simply because. Shesterkin will always make them viable, and you never know what can happen in a division that seems to be on the way down instead of on the way up. If things get rocky, Gallant will be left on the side of the road, and the Blueshirts will never get out of the mud.
Will it go in one way or another? Do you know if a team is big on self- reflection?
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