Sign in Subscribe
New York Rangers Notes

Rangers vs. Bruins: Miller Time Goes Flat

Two goals in his first game back with the Rangers for J.T. Miller wasn't enough to save this game, just as the trade itself isn't enough to save this Rangers season.

Rangers vs. Bruins: Miller Time Goes Flat
© Charles LeClaire-Imagn Images
  • Be honest with me. If I told you yesterday morning that the headline coming out of yesterday's game would be "J.T. Miller Scores Twice in 6-3 Loss to Bruins," you wouldn't have been shocked, right? You shouldn't have been shocked, at least.
  • If you want our initial reactions to the Miller trade—and they're barely "initial" since we knew this trade was almost certainly happening for at least a month—you should check out our Emergency Bandwith podcast here. For me, the general thrust of it is this: In a vacuum, I like the trade. J.T. Miller is a unique combination of skill, speed, and piss and vinegar. The Rangers have needed that, lifeless has they've looked for too much of this season. But this one trade was never going to be enough to "fix" the Rangers.
  • Both teams assumed some risk in this trade. The Rangers risk is mostly financial, in that Miller is already almost 32-years old and is signed for another five seasons at an $8M AAV. There's a real chance that contract won't age well, but between the big jumps coming in the salary cap and the buyout-friendly structure of the deal, there's reason to not be overly concerned about that.
  • The risk the Canucks assumed is that every shift for Filip Chytil might be the last time he ever plays professional hockey. Yes, every player on the ice runs the risk that a freak accident could end their career. But, given the injury history and what we know about players who have already suffered multiple concussions, all it might take is a normal, clean hit and Chytil's career is over. I can't quite put into words how much that sucks, but it's true. I'll miss Chytil, but I won't miss the feeling of dread every time his skates touch the ice.
  • But we're here to talk about the game played after the trade. And, unsurprisingly, the Rangers didn't play particularly well because they are still not a very good hockey team.
  • Let's start with the lineup. Because, uh, what is Laviolette even doing here?
  • I said on the emergency pod, "We are going to see something when the team takes line rushes next that makes us go, what the fuck is going on?" Even I didn't know how right I'd be.
  • There were some people saying, unironically and apparently without having watched a single New York Rangers game this season, that the acquisition of J.T. Miller gives the Rangers one of the deepest center trios in the league. Sure, you have to ignore the fact that Vincent Trocheck has been pretty bad this year, and that Mika Zibenejad has been pretty bad since roughly the Mesozoic Era, and that this is only really true if you're firing up EA Sports NHL25, but okay. I'll stipulate for a moment. Kinda hard to crow about the center depth with Miller and Mika are on the same line, no?
  • The whole thing feels like something from the Tom Renney random line generator from the mid-aughts. Smith with Trocheck and Lafreniere? Kreider-Brodzinski-Cuylle as a third line? Again, I ask, what are we even doing here?
  • One of the best Rangers Twitter follows, John Cougar Colleencamp, had this nailed after the Rangers shat the bed in the last game against Carolina:
  • It was Brodzinski (who scored a very nice deflection goal), not Vesey, but the point stands. Kaliyev, for all his faults, is a guy who at least shoots the puck a lot. Think that kind of player might have been useful in the second period where the Rangers only managed to record two (2) shots on goal?
  • I'm tempted to say I'm not going to beat this dead horse anymore, but the horse is apparently still whinnying and neighing and stamping out insanely stupid lineups, so the beatings will continue until morale improves:
Peter Laviolette Needs To Go Now, Even if This Rangers Season Isn’t His Fault
The Rangers’ woes aren’t just on Laviolette, but his system and player accountability have exacerbated the team’s struggles. With the defense faltering and stars like Zibanejad underperforming, the question isn’t if, but when, the Rangers move on from their coach. That time should be now.
Blueshirt BanterEric Kohn
  • When Laviolette was announced as the head coach before last season, the main hesitations were about him being an old NHL coaching carousel guy. But the Rangers were in a win-now spot, so going with a guy with considerable NHL experience made some sense. The problem now is that the ground has shifted under Peter Laviolette's feet. What started as a win-now, Cup-or-bust season busted out very quickly, in some ways very predictably because we all suspected they still weren't good enough to beat the Florida Panthers of the world, but also because the players got all huffy about the GM and decided to stop trying for weeks on end. Laviolette's lineup decisions are win-now moves for a team that, as we saw yesterday afternoon in Boston, can't win—right now or otherwise. To me, this is all the more reason to just chalk up their losses, send Lavy packing, and ride out the storm with Michael Peca or Dan Muse.
  • One more side note from the Miller trade related to this: Erik Brännström, a former 15th overall draft pick in 2017 by the Vegas Golden Knights, is an offensive-first defenseman that the analytics love, but none of his coaches ever have. His biggest issue is that he's undersized at 5'10". ::glances at Zac Jones:: Yeah, no, I'm sure the Rangers will handle this just fine.
  • I really don't have much more to say about this game. If you want to see J.T. Millers goals, and they were pretty nice, head over to the Game Recap.
  • The Rangers were bad. Very bad. They were very bad against a team that is in almost the exact same position as the Rangers: outside the playoffs looking in, and fighting for their lives. The Bruins played like it. The Rangers played like garbage. The East is so bad this year that it's still possible the Rangers could sneak in. They're six points back but have four teams between them and the second wild card spot. MoneyPuck puts their playoff odds at 35% right now. But even if they could barely get in, why do you want to watch this team get wrecked in a first round series?
  • Ryan Lindgren and Adam Fox are so far out west on this card that if it were the 1800s they'd be considered pioneers. They were bad. Very bad. P.K. Subban roasted the two of them on the first intermission report on ESPN and, as much as I hate to admit it, the slewfooting jackass had a point.
  • I'll close this out with a note on how I'm viewing this team for the rest of this season.
  • This season is cooked. It's a dead man walking. In the immediate wake of the J.T. Miller trade, coming so closely on the heels of that 10-game point streak, I was terrified that Chris Drury had talked himself into thinking he should still go for it this season. But with Miller signed for five more seasons, I think you could argue that both ways. I hope after seeing this team get embarrassed by the Carolina Hurricanes and now the Boston Bruins he realizes this season, and this team as currently constructed, is a lost cause and the dismantling should begin now.
  • Some people on the app formerly known as Twitter were coming hard yesterday for Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin. I want to be abundantly clear: neither of them had a good game. Neither are having their best season in the league, either. But if you think Adam Fox is terrible and Igor Shesterkin is trash, I honestly wonder if you can tie your own shoes.
  • Amidst this raging dumpster fire, there are players I'm completely out on (e.g., Mika Zibenejad and Ryan Lindgren), there are players I'm concerned about (e.g., Chris Kreider and K'Andre Miller, and maybe Vincent Trocheck), and there are players who I'm just not concerned about long term, like Fox and Shesterkin. Fox has 40 points in 51 games, good for seventh among defensemen in the league and a point better than Montreal's Lane Hutson who some people can't stop cooing about even though he's a much worse defender than Fox, all while Fox is dragging around the corpse of Ryan Lindgren on his defensive pair. Shesterkin is currently seventh in the league in goals saved above expected. No, they're not winning the Norris and the Vezenia this year. But if you're trying to tell me you think they are the problem here, I'm just not going to take you seriously.
  • I'm firmly convinced these same people would have wanted to run Brian Leetch out of Manahattan on a rail because he doesn't hit people like Scott Stevens. And as for Shesterkin, well, there's just a whole generations of Rangers fans who known only very good-to-elite goaltending over the last 30 years who just do not have any realistic conception of what actually bad goaltending looks like. And it shows.
  • Parting shot:

Read next