As process improves, wins will come

With the right process, results will come. Even if you fall once.

In case you missed it, the Rangers are in a bit of a funk right now. Well to be fair, “a bit” is just slightly understating the funk. The Rangers have just 17 points since December 2nd, and only the Montreal Canadiens (nine points, and don’t tell me Carey Price isn’t their entire team) have fewer points in that span. It’s a good thing the Rangers banked all those points in October and November, or else this would have been an ugly season.

We’ve taken a few looks at this team from an analytical standpoint. After ten games we –along with 99% of the folks who look at these numbers regularly– predicted that the Rangers would have major regression. It wasn’t that hard to predict. Henrik Lundqvist wasn’t going to continue stopping 96% of his shots and the Rangers weren’t going to continue to shoot 12%. It was just logic. But through all that, we never once believed the Rangers were this year’s pretenders or pure smoke and mirrors.

Then the crash came, and boy was it ugly. But in mid-December there was cause for optimism. The defense was tightening up. The offense was starting to generate more sustained pressure. They were still getting ugly goaltending and poor shooting, but the overall process on the ice was getting better.

That brings us to today, about six weeks into the crash, and there is even more cause for optimism with the on-ice product. Since December 2, the exact timeframe noted above, the Rangers have a 50.1% Corsi-For, tied for 16th in the league. Adjusting it for score situations makes them slightly worse (49.9% – 19th), but it is significantly better than the 45% they were putting up in October and November.

*-Devil’s Advocate: Their scoring-chance-for-percent is much less appealing at 48.7% (48.9%, score adjusted). This suggests that they are getting sustained pressure, but mostly from the outside.

More cause for optimism: In that span, the Rangers have received just a 91.1 even strength SV%, third-worst in the league. While part of that is on the structure of the defense, something we’ve beaten to death around here, part of that is also on Lundqvist. He isn’t a “third-worst in the league” goalie. He’s more of a 93% goalie. If he plays to that average for the remainder of the year, then the Rangers are in good shape. There’s no reason to think he won’t be, at the worst, career average from here on out.

All of the above is interrelated. As the process improves offensively –getting more shots– the Rangers will control the play. Controlling the play means fewer shots against. This in turn suggests better defense, since the best defenses are the ones that limit both quality –which the Rangers have been doing lately– and quantity of shots against. Fewer shots against, both in quality and quantity, should lead to better goaltending numbers.

The past six weeks of hockey have been maddening to watch. But the process on the ice is getting better. This is a playoff team, there’s no doubt about that. A few tweaks in deployment, a trade or two, and a hot streak at the right time can go a long way in April/May.

Yes. I meant to rhyme there.