If the New York Rangers have not hit rock bottom now, we should be afraid to find out what that is. The Blueshirts gave up a pair of hat tricks and a 10-spot in a 10-2 loss to the Bruins in a nationally televised game. Player comments after the game are what we have heard in the past, but what was said has drawn thin as just lip service.
Game recap:
Rangers lines in Boston:
Panarin-Zibanejad-Cuylle
Miller-Trocheck-Lafrenière
Perreault-Laba-Raddysh
Brodzinski-Carrick-Rempe
Gavrikov-Schneider
Robertson-Borgen
Soucy-Morrow
Quick
Martin
Scratches: Blidh, Vaakanainen
IR: Shesterkin (lower-body injury)
LTIR: Edström (lower-body injury), Sheary (lower-body injury), Fox (lower-body injury)
A few thoughts:
1) No heart, No guts. No passion. The only one who showed any was Sam Carrick, who dropped the gloves during the contest. No one else raised their game or showed any anger or annoyance. When you are getting your head handed to you with the embarrassment not stopping, someone, anyone, display a little fire.
This is a flawed team. It was flawed and thin coming out of the offseason (thanks, Chris Drury). It was thin coming out of training camp and is even thinner now due to the absence of Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin. The Rangers (20-20-6) have now lost three in a row and seven of their last nine. If you go back even further, they have just two regulation wins in their last 17 games. They can delude themselves all they want that they are a possible playoff team. Today was further evidence of how much of a farcical view that is.
2) Defensive Structure: As Vince Mercogliano noted, when New York struggled earlier this season, at least we could point to the structure and how they were in games. That was then. The last month-plus, all that has gone to pot. They are no longer playing within the defensive structure needed and have completely fallen apart.
“Back in October and early November, the Rangers could point to solid underlying numbers as evidence that they might turn things around. But after registering a 57.05 percent expected goals-for rate through their first 16 games, they plummeted to 46.34 percent in their next 29, according to Evolving Hockey. That will surely sink even lower once Saturday’s thrashing is factored in.”
Coach Mike Sullivan mentioned this postseason. Mentioning the lack of practice is a cop out. Their play has fallen off significantly.
“A lot of it boils down to details and commitment,” he said. “For a long stretch of the season, I thought we were pretty stingy defensively, and certainly all the numbers suggested that. I think we’ve gotten away from it a little bit lately. The other aspect of it is, we’ve played a lot of hockey. We haven’t had an opportunity to practice much, and I do think that has something to do with it also, because you don’t get a chance to get reps at it. But we’re no different than any other team in that regard. We’ve got to get back to being a stingier team defensively, and we can create offense off of it.”
3) Quotes: Feel free to read the below with a raised eyebrow. The comments have become trite and repetitive, and the fans are tired of hearing the following. Proof is in the pudding; words mean nothing, actions do. Until they turn what they say into action and fix what’s wrong, all of this is pure lip service. Talk all you want about embarrassment and annoyance, and it stings. Yada, yada, yada. That’s what it is. Act on it.
Chris Drury. The time has come to pull the plug. This team is going nowhere.
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