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Greg McKegg - should be brought back as fourth line center

April 5, 2020, 10:46 PM ET [16 Comments]
Jan Levine
New York Rangers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Larry Brooks is providing player evaluations daily in the NY Post, an exercise that began the past Monday. The order is by last name, and while he is not giving a grade, he is giving a sort of high-level assessment. Since it's my hope that we will have hockey, I thought it might be interesting to take one or a few aspects of his daily column along with his closure  - the latter in italics - and provide my view, then receive yours in the comments. I will try and do this daily, and have covered Lias Andersson, Pavel Buchnevich, Filip Chytil, Tony DeAngelo, Jesper Fast, Adam Fox,  Alexandar Georgiev, Brett Howden, Kaapo Kakko and Chris Kreider, Brendan Lemieux, Ryan Lindgren and Henrik Lundqvist. Today, it's Greg McKegg.

McKegg



McKegg, the 27-year-old Rangers forward signed to a 750k contract last offseason, did a pretty, pretty, pretty good job in his standard role as coach David Quinn’s fourth-line center. The problem is that for Quinn’s two years behind the Rangers bench, the role of the fourth-line center has been as narrow as the role of the fourth line, which has been used for the most part as a repository for tough guys and mismatched forwards, but rarely as a defined unit.

Quinn has insisted that he views himself as a four-line coach, but not through two seasons in New York. Part of that surely is personnel-driven. But Quinn loves to ride his top-of-the-line talent, and until the last month or so of this season, he apparently felt it was necessary to have a pseudo-enforcer in the lineup. Hence, Cody McLeod in 2018-19 and, until his season ended in early February with surgery on his bilateral core muscle, Micheal Haley this year.

So, really, the fourth line that most often included Brendan Smith, needed on the penalty kill at his usual defense spot, kind of got leftover minutes and produced little in terms of offense or change of momentum.

McKegg, though, did his part as an energetic, effective forechecker with speed who had an offensive trick or two. Though Quinn occasionally used him as a third-line wing (Calgary!), McKegg got 38 games in the middle of the fourth line that finally gained some definition over the final month of play when No. 14 skated between a demoted Brendan Lemieux and either Brett Howden or Julien Gauthier.

See, right there, the reference to Lemieux’s demotion that makes the term “fourth line” a pejorative one. But Quinn seemed to have more use for the unit with Lemieux on it, and then, even more so when 2016 first-rounder Gauthier (21st overall) joined the club in a mid-February trade with the Hurricanes in which Joey Keane went the other way.

The line was disruptive and hard on the puck in its six games intact, getting about eight minutes a night at five-on-five. It was worthy of trust and it provided the Rangers with an added dimension.


Dominic Moore is the gold standard for Rangers fourth-line centers, with Brian Boyle playing the wing and up in the lineup more than you probably remember. The short-lived combination of Sean Avery on the left with Boyle in the middle and Brandon Prust on the right would be remembered as perhaps the best of the crop, except that it was the second line in the 2011 playoffs against Washington.

Lemieux will be battling for top-nine minutes and Gauthier likely will get an opportunity to show off his offensive talent. But if the Rangers are serious, they could sure use a defined fourth line. They could do much worse than re-upping McKegg to center it.


Brooks did a nice job of laying out the issues with the fourth line, both in terms of construction and usage. Add in the mention of the need of a pseudo-enforcer and we get a sense as to how Quinn set up that bottom trio, which drive many of us nuts. I understand rolling a top-six and a top-nine, but when New York had their run from 2012-17, the team was able to use all four lines effectively, with the fourth line playing a key role.

McKegg isn't a world beater by any stretch of the imagination but he showed that he can be an effective player. He is not a second line player, but on the bottom-six, he brings some grit and a modicum of scoring ability,  When Quinn skated McKegg with players who also brought grit or had some talent, the fourth line was effective.

He shouldn't be too expensive to sign. Maybe one year at 900k and you have one part of your fourth line set. If two of Lemieux, Howden or Gauthier end up on with McKegg, you have a line that can forecheck, create and convert some chances. That trio won't be as effective as some of the fourth lines during that run, but still solid enough to be effective and see reasonable ice time. In addition, as pointed out in the blog comments, Morgan Barron may be signed to give the team another bottom-six option, at least initially, while Lias Andersson could receive another chance, giving the team options.

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