The Rangers run of mistakes continued again Monday in their 6-3 loss to the Canucks. Vancouver’s speed and skill were on full display, aided by New York’s defensive deficiencies. The Blueshirts take on the Blues on Thursday in St. Louis.
A few thoughts:
1) History - those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. For the last month plus, the Rangers have been caught in a lather, rinse and repeat mode. The mistakes apparent and reoccurring nightly have shown no signs of dissipating. In fact, they continue to repeat at an alarming rate.
New York’s hot start has been a distant memory. As Vince Mercogliano and others have noted, tye Rangers have been a middling team for over a month now, as evidenced by eight wins in their last 16 games (8-7-1) dating back to Dec. 5. Compare this mark to their 18-4-1, which we knew was unsustainable, the first 23 games of the season.
Deficiencies existed then but they were papered over by the hot start and special teams play. The latter is still the case, though maybe not at the same rate as earlier in the season. Issues that existed earlier have come to the fore at an alarming rate.
Two main culprits have contributed to the so-so mark lately. First, as Mercogliano noted, increasingly shaky defense, particularly when it comes to defending skilled, speedy teams like the Canucks in transition. The Rangers are the worst team in the league at defending against the rush. Drivers for that is a lack of attention to detail and structure both in the neural and own zone. Each was on display yesterday, and against Montreal, contributing to both losses.
Second, and linked to number one, has been their poor decisions making, which consists partially of pick management. Coach Peter Laviolette spoke about this in the pre-game yesterday. Throwing the puck in the middle of the ice in the neutral zone but especially in their own zone is setting yourself up for failure. As we saw on several of the goals, those turnovers created odd man rushes against. In addition, part of decision making is also knowing when to change.
Yesterday, a poor change led to Vancouver’s third goal of the game. Thursday, Chicago’s only goal resulted from a late change. New York left themselves in a bad position on each and was burned. This is another area that needs to be cleaned up. With an extra day between games this week, today’s and/or tomorrow’s practice should be spent watching film and working on these deficiencies so remediating both because muscle memory. Right now, the bad habits we saw the last few years and seemingly remediated earlier this season have come back in full force.
2) Reversal of trends - starting the season, the power play was humming while 5x5 offense was slumping. Lately, the even-strength offense has been better, though that has been offset by the defense allowing more than they have scored. The forwards, defense and goaltender are all culpable in those struggles.
The Rangers were scoring just 2.06 five-on-five goals per 60 minutes prior to Thanksgiving, which was tied for 26th in the NHL, according to Natural Stat Trick. In 22 games since, they've upped that rate to 2.8 goals, which is tied for eighth during that lengthy period. They've been especially hot with 19 goals scored at 5v5 in seven games since Christmas.
At the same time, their defense has slipped significantly. After allowing 2.06 goals per 60 at 5v5 prior to Thanksgiving, they're surrendering an average of 3.08 in 22 games since, which sits 28th in the league in that span.
3) Lineup - the two lines besides the Artemi Panarin- Vincent Trocheck- Alexis Lafreniere and Will Cuylle-Barclay Goodrow-Jimmy Vesey trios are struggling. Mika Zibanejad has played well but not been the dominant center we saw during his hot streak. The same can be said about Chris Kreider. Blake Wheeler’s time in that unit looks to have come to an end.
The Othmann-Bonino-Brodzinski trio is the line scratched when New York is trailing as they don’t provide enough offense. Othmann either needs to be used or sent back down to the minors. Playing six or seven minutes does him little good. Getting Kaapo Kakko back will lengthen the lineup. His offense was invisible prior to his injury but he did provide a defensive ballast and allowed Wheeler to skate on the third line. If the current struggles continue, this is where additional resources will be added for the stretch run.
Defensively, I could take all three pairings to task. None of them was good yesterday. The K’Andre Miller-Jacob Trouba pairing were especially woeful yesterday. Miller is like the girl with the curl. When he is good, he is very good, when he is bad, cover your eyes as it’s painful to watch. Overall, New York has to stop selling out to generate offense. When they were and are good, they use solid D to generate O, allowing their structure to create opportunities. They need to get back to that structure and quickly as their early season record is becoming a nice memory.
New York Rangers Blogger • 
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