kevin hayes

AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

Until very recently, there had been a growing concern among the Rangers fan base that the team’s inability to win without scoring at least three goals. Their first win of that kind came in Winnipeg, by a score of 2-1. From that point one week ago, the Rangers have scored over three goals just once. That was Sunday against the Devils, a 5-0 shutout. The other three games they won 1-0 (Chicago), lost 2-1 (Chicago), and won 2-0 (Dallas). That’s three wins in four when scoring fewer than three goals.

Some point to offense drying up. Some point to goaltending stepping up. Some point to improved defense. In reality it’s all three. We all knew the offense would dry up. After all, the Rangers weren’t going to shoot 15% the rest of the year. It’s just not possible. But while we knew the offense would dry up to a degree, we also knew the goaltending –which hadn’t been as expected– was going to get better as well.

But perhaps the best indication of improved play is the improved process on the ice. While I do believe the early season CF% numbers were skewed because they had such large leads early in games, the three week stretch from the end of November through the beginning of December appeared to be a sign of things repeating themselves from last year.

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However after the losses to Buffalo and the Islanders, something seemed to snap back into place for the Rangers. Right after those losses, the overall play on the ice got better. They were sustaining more offense and limiting time in the defensive zone. While not perfect, there seemed to be a little more emphasis by the defense on controlling the play out of the defensive zone, instead of just chipping the puck up the boards. With that, we see the CF% rising steadily, as depicted above.

It’s tough to really pinpoint what changed. Rob Luker put some feelers out there, but the only thing he could come up with was a shift in the forward lines. Rob pointed out that during the stretch of poor play, Alain Vigneault was shuffling the lines a bit. But in the recent streak, Kevin Hayes was moved up to 2C, with Oscar Lindberg taking Hayes’ spot as 3C. Brandon Pirri replaced Josh Jooris on the fourth line, and then there was consistency. AV hasn’t changed his forward lines or defense pairings much in this run. Consistency, it seems, has helped.

Keep in mind that this is still without Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich. Marek Hrivik has done a wonderful job filling in as a fourth line guy, but he (or Matt Puempel) is likely headed to the press box or the AHL once one or both are back.

The one thing we focus on here is process. If the process is good, usually the results follow. There’s a level of skill involved as well, which the Rangers have, but good process always breeds good results. During that stretch in November-December, it was a bad process. The last few games have been good process.

But the question remains: Which team is the real Rangers team?

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