The New York Rangers are off to their worst start (1-5) since 1980, when final scores like 7-2 and 8-4 were commonplace.  The team has done a little bit of everything wrong in each of its five losses, and in fact were not particularly good in their lone victory against Montreal (thanks, Henrik!).

It’s been two weeks of poor hockey, and the Rangers are already on course to make their lives difficult in terms of playoff positioning when March and April come around.  Think of it this way: even if the Rangers manage to go a respectable 8-6 over their next 14 games, they’ll be 9-11 at the quarter mark of the season.  It’s a long climb out when you dig yourself an early-season hole in the NHL.

Results aside, there are major issues with the Rangers at all levels, from players to management, individually and collectively.  Here’s a little rant on each of them.

  • Let’s start with something we can all agree on: the eye test.  In a word, it’s bad.  There are missed passes, egregious giveaways (particularly in the defensive zone), awful finishing, silly penalties, and just some plain old bad luck.  The Rangers are horrible at getting out of their own zone and even worse on the forecheck.  The “sixty-minute game” is a cliché I loathe (no team ever truly dominates 60 minutes of hockey), but the Rangers have maddening, extended stretches of play where literally nothing happens.  It’s ridiculous, inexcusable and unwatchable.
  • The numbers don’t lie either. Going into last night’s game against the Devils, the Rangers ranked 28th of 31 teams in CF% and 25th in expected goals (score-adjusted, 5v5 statistics per Corsica.Hockey).  You can hate the fancy stats all you want, but they match the eye test.  The Rangers have consistently been second best in their games, getting out-shot and out-chanced.
  • On an individual level, it has not been good enough from the players. Only Mika Zibanejad and Henrik Lundqvist are immune from criticism in my mind.  The players in desperate need of a wakeup call are…
    • Ryan McDonagh – He is supposed to be the team’s best all-around skater and has yet to live up to billing in any game this season. You can blame the revolving door of defense partners, but only to a point.  McDonagh carried the corpse of Dan Girardi around the ice last year and had an outstanding season.  It has to be better from the Rangers captain.
    • Kevin Shattenkirk – Shatty’s numbers at 5v5 are abysmal: 0 goals, 0 assists, 44.6 CF%. Is this all he has to offer?
    • Brendan Smith – Has been a train-wreck since he got walked around by Erik Karlsson in Game 6 of the playoffs last year.
    • Chris Kreider – Is basically benefiting from playing with Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich, the Rangers’ two best forwards so far this season.
    • Kevin Hayes – Season started two weeks ago, dude.
  • In terms of the coaching, not much more needs to be said. A lot of the players listed above have been put in a position to fail by their coach, who seems to have no idea how to optimize the roster he has at his disposal.  As my fellow bloggers here have discussed at length, the Rangers’ roster is imperfect, with a gaping hole at center and (perhaps) not enough defensive acumen on the blue line despite its increased mobility and offense.  That said, any team that believes Nick Holden should play on its first pair over Kevin Shattenkirk doesn’t deserve to win hockey games.
  • Jeff Gorton does not escape blame here either. Whether he misread the trade market or has another trick up his sleeve for later this year we don’t know, but the facts are this: he dealt his #1 center for a defenseman that he had should have known his coach wouldn’t care for, and a draft pick that has gotten off to a horrid start in the Swedish Elite League after failing to make the Rangers out of camp (despite being touted as “NHL ready”).  He also tacitly agreed with Alain Vigneault’s “assessment” of Filip Chytil by sending him to Hartford.  It’s impossible to take the temperature of the coach/GM relationship, but a lot of what Vigneault is doing seems to be in direct opposition to the moves Gorton has made the last two years.  It’s easy to wonder how long Gorton will let this go on before he decides cut Vigneault loose.

Ultimately what’s most frustrating is just how familiar all of this feels.  The bad player deployment, long stretches of listless hockey, subpar possession stats, with goaltending largely responsible for any positive results has been the story in Rangerstown for a large part of the last three seasons.  Even so early into this season, it doesn’t appear as though anything is going to change.

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