Blessed with plenty of depth, Alain Vigneault is reducing icetime for his stars

Blessed with plenty of depth, Alain Vigneault is reducing ice time for his stars

In his column yesterday, the Post’s Larry Brooks wondered if New York’s choppy start is in part due to an inability to find the proper motivation for relatively meaningless early-season tilts, as well as general fatigue and wear and tear suffered by key players.

Whether or not that’s a viable excuse for the team’s uneven performance thus far – and no one within the organization would ever admit it if it was – one of the early trends of the 2015-2016 season seems to be a conscious decision by coach Alain Vigneault to put an increased emphasis on resting his squad, specifically, its biggest stars. 

Vigneault isn’t overtly throwing games by scratching his stars a la Gregg Popovich with the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, but there are noticeable changes in the way he’s deploying his players.

Stalwarts like Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi have been mainstays among the league leaders in average TOI for years, but have seen their minutes slashed significantly over the last two seasons. This year neither is present anywhere near the top of that list – McDonagh leads the team with a modest average of 21:58 and Girardi clocks in at 20:56. In fact, Kevin Klein and Keith Yandle are the only other Blueshirts over the 18:30 mark, and there’s a whole cluster of players in the mid-teens.

Given Vigneault arrived with a deep-set reputation for line matching at every opportunity, the more even split does seem to be an evolution in thinking.

On the defensive side, part of the reason for the new allocation could be due to lingering injuries that McDonagh, Girardi and Marc Staal carried into the summer, as well as the full integration of Yandle into the lineup. But it’s also likely an effort by Vigneault to keep many of his soldiers, who have played dozens of extra playoff games in recent years, fresh over the course of the grueling 82-game season.

Vigneault’s job is made easier by perhaps the deepest roster the Blueshirts have had during the Henrik Lundqvist era. Long gone are the days when goons like Donald Brashear, Mike Rupp and Colton Orr dressed regularly only to play five or six minutes a game. With the long overdue decision to waive Tanner Glass yesterday, there’s no longer an anchor in the lineup – each Blueshirt is ready and able to contribute, which makes doling out ice time evenly a much easier task. Excluding Glass and Emerson Etem, who has played just one game, no Ranger is averaging less than 11:30 a night. The lowest average belongs to Viktor Stalberg, who has four points in seven games and has been repeatedly praised by Vigneault for his speed and physicality.

How much of this trend is really a result of a new philosophy from Vigneault is anybody’s guess, but the seeds may have been planted going into last year when Vigneault announced his plans to increase Cam Talbot’s workload to provide a little extra respite for The King.

Coming off a President’s Trophy winning regular season in which Talbot provided tremendous relief for Lundqvist, Vigneault seems to have doubled down on his interest in preserving his troops. Vigneault’s aversion to gameday morning skates is nothing new, but skipping them altogether is a notable step few others have taken.

The extra attention to rest is part of the gradual maturity of a veteran squad, and it’s something teams like the Chicago Blackhawks and LA Kings, who make deep runs year after year, have tried to implement with varying degrees of success. But it’s also a very logical plan, and one that could pay real dividends if it gives youngsters like Oscar Lindberg, Kevin Hayes and JT Miller a few more opportunities to gain experience in lieu of the veterans, while giving the bruised and battered an extra breather here and there along the way.

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