fletch

The Rangers should be favored to win in 5 or 6 games no matter who their opponent is in the first round, and should advance if they play to their capabilities. Full-stop. Whoever gets the final playoff spot in the East earned it by playing great hockey down the stretch. I assumed that the Rangers would take care of business against Ottawa on Monday and watched the Penguins, Red Wings, and Islanders (yes, I cheated on the Rangers and admitted it). The Red Wings have had 13 third period comeback wins and came back and won against Montreal in a game they were down big - they are like watching the Coyotes when Arizona knows they have to put up 5+ goals to win some nights. Penguins are probably playing their best hockey down the stretch, and certainly don't look like the old, slow team we last faced. I haven't seen too much of Washington but they seem to have found hot goaltending and defensive structure to limit chances. So the Rangers won't be able to just show up to the arena and win.

I mean, in addition to the first round playoff loss. They're working on their third coach in 5 years. An aging core has no move clauses. GM continues to try and find quick fixes through deadline veterans at the cost of young player TOI. Players like Shesterkin and Laf give you reason for hope, but there's some vets that are just giving diminishing returns, which is tough. Yet we're one deep run from reviving the fan base.

Let's look at the St Louis Blues in their Stanley Cup Year of 2018-2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_St._Louis_Blues_seasons https://www.hockey-reference.com/teams/STL/2019.html People spin their season different ways. You can say firing Yeo and bringing in Craig Berube was the right coach at the right time for the team. You can say that bringing in Ryan O'Reilly was the catalyst that put them over the top. You can say that Binnington was unbelievably good when they brought him up in the regular season and throughout the post-season run. I'll say that they had two scorers that had more than 60 points in the regular season (O'Reilly and Tarasenko) and that they certainly weren't the most talented team in the Western Conference. What I remember from their playoff run is that they rolled four lines that brought it every shift - there was no coasting - and they were a hard team to play, with solid fundamental hockey plays, that no one could manage to knock out. Did they get puck luck and fortunate bounces? Yup. Was it a long-shot that they would get a .920 caliber goalie when they brought up an unknown goalie? Yup. Did O'Reilly make an impact in the regular season and the playoffs? Yup. But they earned a Stanley Cup when they probably had the talent of a team that usually gets knocked out in the first or second round. I look forward to when I hear people call the Rangers hard instead of soft - because it will mean the franchise is on the right track.

Many players manage to work hard every shift. Is it too much to ask for 15 solid shifts a game? What should the threshold be? 12 good shifts a night? 8 good shifts a night? Or is it OK to just show up for the third period with the game in the balance and make one play to generate the GWG? The tragedy is when a player is capable of more, but fails to achieve. The great ones (the legends) have the extra gear and drive to be the best. The best coaches are able to get the best out of talented players, who may not have the internal drive or belief that they can be better. And then there are the very good players with solid careers, who retire and are welcomed back with full-throated cheers. And the regret that that player didn't earn a Cup. Then come the excuses. The surrounding cast wasn't good enough. Faced a hot goaltender. Got unlucky. Ran into a team of destiny. Lots of excuses over the years for this franchise.

We're all killing time until we see what happens in the playoffs. Think about the Bruins last season and the narrative because Florida bounced them in the first round - the Bruins had a great regular season and a terrible taste in their mouth because of how it ended. If we focus on Kreider for a moment as an example of an important key vet. Kreider has well-deserved accolades because of his skill, performance and production over the years. But when I watch him and then I watch Tkachuk, I just wonder what could have been with Kreider. Yes, Kreider does deliver clutch goals. And yes, Kreider can be invisible for long stretches of games. Both can be true and part of the same narrative. Kreider just wastes so many shifts when he could be an impactful player. One interpretation of the Devils playoff series is that the core veterans didn't match the intensity of the Devils in pivotal games, and talent-wise an inferior team knocked us out of the playoffs. If the core veterans played with Florida Panther type intensity, could the Rangers have had a similar deep run? It's an unanswerable question, other than we need more from the core veterans this year. I don't think Vezina Shesterkin, one scoring line, and relying on power play goals is a recipe for success in the playoffs - we'll need more. The Rangers have shown that they can play with structure and with defensive zone responsibility when they focus in stretches. If they do away with the sloppy breakouts, giving up the odd man rushes, having defensive breakdowns by leaving opponents wide open in dangerous spots, win puck battles along the boards, and bring a physical presence in front of the net at both ends, then their ceiling is much higher. When they play lazy, perimeter hockey and don't skate hard, they are an eminently beatable team. The Rangers still play hard only when they want to - and Laviolette hasn't been able to change that. Laviolette has continued the organization's focus on taking ice time away from the young players and the bottom two lines because of problems with performance, which started well before his tenure. If you have a leadership letter of C or A, then you largely are exempt from losing time on ice or power play time. I would rather see more demanded of the young players, the checking lines, AND the core veterans. But we'll see. Playoffs are a small sample size and matchup dependent. Maybe last year's Bruins beat any Eastern Conference team other than the Panthers in the first round - it was a close series and Florida ended up going on a run. Everyone is going to start 0-0 and need 16 wins starting Saturday - all the regular season does is eliminate half the league, and give 16 teams a chance to start their campaign.

I can only speak for myself, but Zib and Kreider can't do anything to redeem themselves during the regular season for what happened in the Devils series in the playoffs. I haven't seen anything in the regular season that definitively shows that this team has fixed it's deficiencies from last year's playoffs and is ready for a deep playoff run. GDT is not the place for a debate of pros and cons of this team, but figured you deserved a response.

1. Artemi Panarin 2. Adam Fox 3. Igor Shesterkin +2 4. Vincent Trocheck 5. Alexis Lafrenière 6. Jonathan Quick 7. Mika Zibanejad 8. Chris Kreider 9. Ryan Lindgren 10. Jacob Trouba 11. K'Andre Miller 12. Braden Schneider 13. Kaapo Kakko 14. Jimmy Vesey 15. Zac Jones 16. Will Cuylle 17. Matt Rempe 18. Jack Roslovic 19. Erik Gustafsson 20. Barclay Goodrow 21. Alexander Wennberg 22. Jonny Brodzinski 23. Chad Shesterkin with some huge saves against the Isles kept us in the game.

Need this win. I’m sick of playing isles.

Simple, soft players.

This game would be out of reach without Shesterkin’s heroics. Losing so many puck battles, sloppy turnovers, blown covers, so fucking bad.

The Rangers seem to believe that playing a solid five or six minutes every now and then and converting on special teams is enough and what happens during the rest of the game doesn’t matter very much.

Okay I could use a break from watching us kill penalties for the rest of the period. Geez.

Liked the Rangers push to start the game, the power play, and first kill. Solid goaltending at both ends. Big kill to start the second.

1. Artemi Panarin 2. Adam Fox 3. Vincent Trocheck 4. Alexis Lafrenière 5. Igor Shesterkin 6. Jonathan Quick +2 7. Mika Zibanejad 8. Chris Kreider 9. Ryan Lindgren 10. Jacob Trouba 11. K'Andre Miller 12. Braden Schneider 13. Kaapo Kakko 14. Jimmy Vesey 15. Zac Jones 16. Will Cuylle 17. Matt Rempe 18. Jack Roslovic 19. Erik Gustafsson 20. Barclay Goodrow 21. Alexander Wennberg 22. Jonny Brodzinski 23. Chad Quick was solid and one of the few Rangers who showed up against the Flyers. Not a lot of skaters that are gunning for a promotion based on what they've done against Isles and Flyers.

Enough of this rotating players to keep everyone fresh message, let’s put our best lines together and say the playoffs start Saturday and we need to start playing to win. We can’t just flip the switch on for game 83. These games down the stretch matter.