Thoughts following the terrible road trip

Can we pretend this weekend didn’t happen?

The Rangers completed a trip through western Canada over the weekend, going a miserable 0-2-1 against Vancouver, Edmonton, and Calgary. They played well in Vancouver, but lost due to some questionable officiating. But the two games in Alberta were train wrecks, with the Rangers giving up 12 goals total in those games. Time for some additional thoughts.

1. Those that paid attention to the underlying stats saw this coming. The Rangers were playing above their heads, relying too much on goaltending and unsustainable shooting, and not playing a puck possession game. All of the team’s issues were masked by the goaltending and shooting, and now we are seeing this come crashing down to Earth. The stats are more of a predictive model of which teams are following right process but not necessarily getting results, as well as identifying teams that are getting results without process. It’s like The Weather Channel. They aren’t always right, but most of the time, they are. This is one of those times where they were right, and the Rangers’ poor play is catching up to them.

2. That said, the Rangers are still a playoff team. Henrik Lundqvist will make sure of it, and the forwards are way too skilled for this team to miss. The issue lies with the defense, as we’ve been harping on for what feels like an eternity. Name value doesn’t mean on-ice value. Dan Girardi and Marc Staal are the worst offenders here, and they’ve been downright miserable. The other guys are susceptible to their own cough ups, but these two not only getting a free pass from a lot of people, people seem to think their play is acceptable. They are, without a doubt in my mind, the worst pairing among playoff teams. When they aren’t paired together, their partners drag them around like anchors. If Dylan McIlrath played the way either of these two have played, he’d be on the waiver wire in a heartbeat.

3. It’s about time Jarret Stoll sat. He’s been pretty bad as well. Outside of faceoff wins, he hasn’t contributed much in the past month or so. He does get killed with defensive zone starts, which skews his numbers, but not to the point where he should be considered a defensive force. Dominic Moore gets the same deployment and his numbers, while certainly not good, are significantly better. All this while Emerson Etem, a player for whom the Rangers traded a valuable body, sits on the bench, unable to get a legitimate shot at staying in the lineup.

4. And that part falls on Alain Vigneault. Etem doesn’t belong on the fourth line, getting crushed with defensive zone starts. The kid is not good in the defensive zone, you’re not paying him to play defense. When the team was successful in 2013-2014, they had a similar guy like that in Benoit Pouliot, someone who could score but couldn’t play defense. Mats Zuccarello was pretty rough in his own end during that season as well. I’m not saying Etem is going to produce like them, but give him the chance to succeed by giving him offensive zone time. It’s about getting the most out of the assets on this team to get wins. Deployment matters in today’s NHL, both in zone starts and in quality of teammates.

5. The Rangers are not a 2-6-2 team, but they aren’t a 16-3-2 team either. Their record now, at 18-9-4, is actually better than I expected at this juncture. They usually turn it up in December, and their possession numbers are trending in the right direction over the last five games. At least that process seems to be getting better, although if they don’t execute in their own zone, it won’t matter. But the breakdowns we saw in Edmonton and Calgary were reminiscent of the breakdowns we saw for the first two months when AV took over in 2013. You can maybe excuse some new comers for these mistakes, but not someone who’s been here since last season. Execution matters.

6. You’re never as good as you are when you’re at your best, and never as bad as you are when you’re at your worst. The Rangers will turn this schneid around, but at what point do the major issues get addressed?