Br4d

This is the fiction happening right now. What exactly do you think the exchange between GG and Trocheck on the bench was? It looked a lot to me like GG telling Trocheck he was doing the same stuff he'd been asked not to do.

If he worked out it would be catching lightning in a bottle. We'd have had better odds that GG gets us back to the big show. Not good odds but better odds.

I'm not going to move on until I see value in keeping Panarin and that value is not there right now. Panarin is a soft player who vanishes if the game gets chippy. It's like he doesn't want to be on the ice when that stuff is going on. That 8 minutes at the end of game 2 where the officials were sorting everything out by sending half the benches to the locker room? That was the last time we saw Panarin do anything useful. When the game gets like that he's checked out.

The second guy is definitely Gerard Gallant.

Panarin, Zib and Fox count for more than a third of the cap. If those 3 guys can't lead by example if nothing else then you have nothing. The reason you have to find a deal for Panarin is that there have to be consequences for the collapse against the Devils that extend beyond the coach because the next coach is going to be just as handicapped by having a third+ of the cap occupied by those guys. You need to clear out a vet and you need to do it in a way that says "you cannot suck in the playoffs on this team and have any certainty you will be here next season NMC or no."

GG coached us to 217 points over two seasons with a roster full of enigmas and open questions. Given the Rangers overall defensive weakness over the two seasons that was a pretty good accomplishment. No system that was installed was going to make this a topflight defensive unit. Igor covered for lack of defensive skills/effort in key players and he did it very well.

If the Rangers traded Fox Miller would be the guy on PP1. Not that the Rangers should trade Fox. He's probably the most valuable player on the current team both in value and on the ice. Only Igor is close.

You don't blow up a roster by trading the 25 year old star and keeping the 30+ guys.

McDavid is a great player. Phil Esposito had 127 pts or higher 5 seasons in a row, including completely McDavid-like numbers, when the Rangers traded Park for him. Yes he was older and coming out of his prime and it was just a completely crappy trade given who else was also involved. However the Rangers gave up the 2nd best defenseman in the NHL in the deal and everything had to work out perfectly for them for the deal to be good.

You don't trade a 25 year old blueliner who has won the Norris already and is in the conversation every year. That's the Brad Park mistake. We got arguably the best scorer in the NHL coming back the other way and the deal still failed. Panarin has to be the sacrifice. He is the most representative of the team's flaws at the moment and the highest cap hit and he's exiting his prime years. We should all pray that Drury can find a deal for him now because he's going to be unmovable on performance/cap hit maybe as early as next year. That was a really crappy 6 games in a row for him in the playoffs and it is unlikely to be an accident.

Trading the young star defenseman didn't work out for the Rangers in the 70's and it is unlikely to workout now. They need to move Panarin. If they really can't do that they need to move Kreider. The Rangers need to give Lafreniere the full shot with no BS in front of him if the move is slow to succeed. It's time.

Which of our top 9 players do you believe Panarin has chemistry with at this point? The only player on the roster that I think he really has chemistry with is Adam Fox and that's because they are so good at playing keepaway with the puck in the offensive zone.

But dontcha know the new coach will make them all skate better/harder/faster in his system (whatever that is) and all the problems will go away like magic. Just ask Pete he'll tell you.

Your counterpoint is an opinion not a fact.

It's easier to fire the coach than the players. On the Rangers it is *much* easier.

I'm not absolving GG. I'm just saying that making him the witch in the situation ignores the fact that the townspeople all sucked when it mattered. Some day, hopefully not soon, you're going to look back at 217 points over two regular seasons and ask yourself how that happened with such a 'bad' coach behind the bench. My reasoned determination is that this Rangers team was not built with playoff hockey in mind with too many players that were capable of playing one speed only. My further determination is that the Rangers have not been good at even strength over the two seasons in question and have relied heavily on goal tending and the power play for their success over that span. Given that a third of the roster seems to be entitled vets playing at the speed they want too and a third is young guys struggling to break out I don't begrudge the Rangers the change at HC. I just somewhat doubt that the next guy is going to manage the breakout that is needed and I *highly* doubt that we're looking at 217 points over the next two seasons under his tutelage. I hope I am wrong but the way this went down really bodes poorly for what comes next. Of course Drury could trade Lafreniere/Miller and hire a vet retread HC and kind of guarantee the ship sinks but I'm guessing he has other plans in mind. At least I hope so.

Again, the Rangers were sloppily put together last season. The Tarasenko deal is very defensible but the Kane deal looks a lot like the FO lost focus on what would make the Rangers a stronger team and instead went for the name. The name actually made the Rangers worse come playoff time.

The kids line was playing dynamic hockey before the trades and got de-prioritized again and lost their edge afterwards. People have this idea that GG was the problem but I think Drury was much more problematic last season.

You guys do all realize that Mike Keenan never sniffs that cup in '94 without Mark Messier, right? Bringing in a vet HC to get over the top isn't going to work unless the Rangers find their Messier also. Knoblauch at least gives us a shot with the kids and he also gives us closure if he can't get it done because he and Drury and Murphy all go in the wash.

2017 is an NHL eternity ago. Did you know that the 6 game scoreless streak against the Devils was the longest of Panarin's career?

This is not the first time Laffy has had more even strength goals than Zibanejad and Panarin. And no, I don't think there's a problem with Zibanejad at this point. He does just fine when he has a good RW on a regular gig, however that only happens on the powerplay.

Panarin didn't get Gallanted. He just got fit into a roster with too many players with his basic traits and then his contributions were both downgraded because other people could do those things too and the things he didn't do well were highlighted because not enough guys did those things either. This Rangers collapse was more roster composition than coaching. When the Rangers needed to assert some physical control on the ice they weren't able too because they had too many finesse players stick-checking and too many players not playing at the speed the Devils were. I'll bet GG and Drury got really heated after game 4 when Drury was talking about adjustments and GG was asking why everybody did the same thing.

The real problem is the Rangers are soft and with a few exceptions (Zibanejad, Trocheck, Fox, Lindgren, Trouba, maybe Kakko) not all that interested in defense. Panarin sets a really bad example for the Rangers as one of the team leaders. It's not so much that he is bad defensively as that he is generally uninterested in playing defense. He's quite capable of being a strong defensive player but that side of his game rarely shows up. Then you have the problem that he is largely a perimeter player and that some of the Rangers younger players seem to regard him as a player worth emulating and he's just generally bad for the group development.

It has to do with when what Panarin wants to do is not available there is no second option with him. There are other things too. I thought Panarin was the best player on the ice game one. Then things got very chippy in game 2 and of course Panarin vanished for the rest of the series, like we haven't seen this act from him before. He's a great player but he's not a good playoff player. Can't afford to have an 8th of the cap going there. That's just begging for repeat problems next season.

Panarin has been here for 4 years now. He's gotten comfortable. That's the death knell for any real playoff chances he has.