The Rangers, despite getting outplayed, carried a 1-0 lead over the Flyers to late in the second. Poor defense - stop me if you heard that before - resulted in a goal against with 1.7 seconds to go in the second stanza. New York doubled and tripled down on the mistakes in the third, allowing four goals - including a pair to Kevin Hayes - resulting in a 5-1 loss. The Blueshirts are now off thanks to the Xmas break until Friday when they face the Hurricanes.
Game recap:
Merry Xmas to all those celebrating.
A few thoughts:
1)
Poor defense:
a) On the first goal against, nice box, yet each player was at least five feet away from Travis Sanheim, especially Zib and Staal, who backed out.
b) On the second, Pavel Buchnevich, who can't buy a goal, failed to pick up Kevin Hayes coming down the middle. I know many focused on the shot, believing Henrik Lundqvist should have stopped it. But Buch failing to mark his man led to the chance. Unsure if it was a lack of hustle or smarts, but bad play on Buch. You could argue that the d-men should have handed off the other two forwards with one getting Hayes, leaving the puck holder, Joel Farabee, for Buch, but that requires too much coordination.
Jacob Trouba wasn't good at all in this contest. He has had a very up-and-down season, more down than up in mu opinion. Right now, the long-term contract New York gave Trouba is not looking like a wise use of cap space. But that hopefully changes in the near-term.
2)
System - what is the system? Does everyone know it? Is this the right system to be deployed for the personnel? Is David Quinn the right coach for this team? How wedded is he to the desire to have a North-South squad as opposed the East-West players that he seems to disdain? All of this must be figured before too long. Could all the criticism lobbed on Lindy Ruff be off-base and the real issue is Quinn? A good friend whose view I trust says that the team has no structure or system. Unsure I am willing to go that far, but hared to argue at times based upon what we see.
3)
Power-less man-advantage: New York went 0-for-4 — including a 56-second stretch of five-on-three in the first period — and are now 0-for-18 in their last five games. The power play is killing this team right now, which is what Quinn said after the game. But I am tired about hearing making changes with nothing done. Shift the personnel and see what happens because right now, what they are using isn't working.
"We’re going to move some pieces around, I'll tell you that. But our mentality — we get it, we hold it, we stick handle it, we look for a pretty pass – instead of just moving around and playing hockey within a power play. It's killing us right now."
"It's killing us, and our power play obviously was — it's really hurt us lately," Quinn said. "Our power play had plenty of chances. You get a five-on-three and we just — it’s a team-wide problem — slowing the play down and not shooting pucks."
Happy holidays to all
New York Rangers Blogger • 
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