The Rangers fell 3-2 to the Predators on Opening Night on Thursday, A solid enough initial foray by the Blueshirts, who showed positives in the defeat. Areas of development clearly remain, but the team should bring effort with a fairly exciting brand of hockey nightly.
Game recap:
A few thoughts:
1) Rangers always do a great job on big events and yesterday was no different. The player introductions were solid but the John Amirante tribute was phenomenal. Very well done.
2) David Quinn - as we have seen so far, and evidenced in his post-game comments, Quinn has no issue calling out problems and not taking the easy road. He could gone for the niceties after the loss, but made it clear that he didn't think the performance was good enough. That's a marked change from years past, as Quinn is setting the tone of expectations and what is the standard right up front.
Quinn Post-Game:
ost
"We’ve just got to be harder on the puck, we’ve got to do a better job of playing ‘in your face’ hockey." -#NYR Head Coach David Quinn pic.twitter.com/lRvqeYC3lr
3) Offense - finishing is still a challenge. Jimmy Vesey had a open chance in front and was stoned. Mats Zuccarello had two golden chances, one at the end of the first period and then one in the third, and was denied both times. The good news was that the team got better and started to drive play, especially in the third, but they need to finish some of these chances.
The KZB line was okay, thought of the three Chris Kreider had the least impactful game. Vesey-Hayes-Zucc had chances and as a whole, might have been the best trio. Filip Chytil showed his creativity on the backhand pass to Jesper Fast for the goal and that duo with Ryan Spooner, despite the poor advanced metrics, had some real good shifts on the ice. Brett Howden got his feet wet and Vinny Lettieri carried over his play from camp but Vladislav Namestnikov did little for me in this game.
4) Defense - liked what I saw from Adam McQuaid. Kevin Shattenkirk looked like he was trying to do too much, which likely is a carryover from his absence and wanting to hit the ground running immediately. Neal Pionk might have been the team's best blueliner last night while Brendan Smith looked more like the 2017 version than the 2018 version in the game. Brady Skjei was fine and his ability to skate, same with Pionk, makes him a great fit for this system, once the team really settles into playing that style. Marc Staal is still slow and it will be interesting to see how the d-pairings change over the next month or so to find the optimal combinations.
5) Henrik Lundqvist sure looked on his game last night. On P.K. Subban's goal, it looked like Hank got slightly screened by 'Kirk. That's an area the team is working on, as mentioned by Lundqvist in the post-game, and Shattenkirk just didn't get fully out of the way. Though I thought Lundqvist could have stopped it. Filip Forsberg's tally was a quick strike and real good shot. Lundqvist made several excellent saves, including a brilliant glove stop in the first. Wonder if Quinn plays him both Saturday and Sunday or uses Alexandar Georgiev in the one of the contests.
6) The effort was there. New York did a better job as the game wore on limiting rushes through the neutral zone and supporting the D in their own zone. In addition, when the D works, you can see the counter attack possibilities. Of course, having ice that isn't choppy helps on counter-attacking.
7) Officiating - missed the high stick to McQuaid, right after, clean faceoff loss, goal Subban. Of course, they saw the too many men on the ice penalty, which was an easy one, as another player came on during the delayed call to Hank when six were already on the ice. Offsetting penalties, then on the 5-on-4, another clean faceoff loss - notice a pattern - and empty net goal to make it 3-1. Pavel Buchnevich scored with 34 seconds to go, deflecting a Zib shot, but too little too late.
Again, positive signs in the loss. No moral victories in defeats but some good takeaways, A good first effort against a very strong team. Now, it's Buffalo on Saturday and Carolina on Sunday.
New York Rangers Blogger • 
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