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New York Rangers Notes

Rangers vs. Kraken: What The Hell Did We Just Watch?

Rangers vs. Kraken: What The Hell Did We Just Watch?
Image credit: Jenn G. Source: Wikimedia Commons
  • In a lot of ways, this game was not as bad as the final score suggests, nor was it as bad as my initial reaction to it. Neither was the loss to the Devils, for that matter, but any time you find yourself on the wrong side of a 5-1 score, it's going to be hard to tell yourself that you didn't play that terribly. Similarly, hard to feel great about a game where you surrender 7 goals, even if one was an empty netter. However, while we've seen worse efforts from this team, a loss is still a loss and this was a very winnable game that the Rangers still lost.
  • The first period was the fourth consecutive period of hockey where the Rangers looked like they gave a damn. They outshot the Kraken 12-6 and got the period's only tally, a 5v5 goal from the Mika Zibanejad line that was finished off by Reilly Smith. Smith in particular has looked great the last couple of games. Getting this line producing at 5v5 would be a huge boon to this team.
  • An example of them looking like they give a damn? Remember a few games ago against the Flyers when Dave Maloney dressed down the team for skating away nonchalantly when the entire Flyers team was getting in Panarin's face after the whistle? Well, no more of that:
  • After the first period? Less great. We know team defense has been a problem. And the good news from this game is that, overall, it wasn't their worst defensive effort. It wasn't odd man rushes against all day long. They held Seattle to 22 shots on goal. And they didn't surrender an inordinate number of high danger chances, which they'd been bleeding for almost all of this streak of losses and terrible play:
  • The problem, as Adam says, is that the high danger chances they did surrender were horrifyingly bad defensive lapses, and all of them ended up in the back of the net. I'm honestly at a loss about this. I can't remember the last time I saw a team that when they made a defensive mistake, each and every time it might be the worst defensive mistake I've ever seen.
  • Which brings me back, again, to the coaching. What ever adjustments, whatever is being worked on in practice to fix this, it's not working. I don't think Laviolette is on the cusp be being fired. But at what point do you have to start wondering about, say, associate head coach Phil Housley? It's honestly starting to remind me of the defensive disaster that ultimately led to the firing of Lindy Ruff when he was an assistant coach under David Quinn.
  • But it wasn't just the defense that was a problem in this game. Hey Stan Fischler, how's your, ahem, number 1 goalie looking right now? Jonathan Quick's expected goals against in that game, according to Natural Stat Trick, was 1.59. Needless to say, if he turns in that kind of a performance, the Rangers win the game easily. We knew that the streak he was on to begin this season was unsustainable. Quick is a Hall of Famer and a legend, but he's 38 years old. But this regression has been brutal:
  • The good? The stretch of play in the third period when they rallied to pull within a goal was some dominant hockey. The Lafrenière goal in particular was nice:
  • Speaking of nice goals, Filip Chytil, man:
  • While we're still on the subject of good things: Will Cuylle. He has 21 points in 25 games played this season. He had 21 points in all 81 games he played last season. I think that's what you call a breakout season. The only dark cloud to this silver lining is the cost of his next contract continues to go up up up.
  • Someone pointed out in the Blueshirt Banter internal slack how it seems like Rangers can never do anything productive when they're trailing late and pull the goalie. I said the last time I could remember them scoring a with the goalie pulled was the K'Andre Miller's buzzer-beater tie the game against Dallas back in January 2023. Turns out I was wrong. The last time was Game 5 against Florida when Lafrenière scored to make it a 3-2 game. Which also explains why I didn't remember it.
  • Look, removing Jacob Trouba from this roster, which was absolutely a necessary move, was not alone going to fix this team's problems. Yes, there's some element of addition by subtraction. And there might be more addition by subtraction in the near future.
  • Ryan Lindgren played only 16:22 in that game. Only Victor Mancini saw less ice time among defensemen. He didn't play a whole lot after the 5th Kraken goal. Really makes you wonder if 1) he comes out of the lineup whenever Vaakanainen is healthy enough to play, and 2) if he's the next to be shipped out.
  • It's good that they didn't get run out of the building like they did against the Oilers, the Blues, or the Flyers. But at some point they need to start winning the games where they play well enough to win.
  • As Chris Feldman said in the Game Recap: "In a normal season, you’d chalk this one up to it being a flukey afternoon outing but the Rangers haven’t been in a position to make excuses for weeks now. They have to be better and the longer it takes for them to do so, the louder that alarms are sounding. "
  • The good news/bad news situation now is there's a quick turn around to the Rangers' next game. They'll be back on the MSG ice tonight against the league-worst Chicago Blackhawks, who only a few days ago fired their head coach Luke Richardson and then lost their first game under interim head coach Anders Sorensen 4-2 to the Winnipeg Jets. Be honest with me, Rangers fans, this has potential disaster written all over it. I hope they prove me wrong.
  • Parting shot:

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