ryan mcdonagh

McDonagh

The Rangers’ defensive unit was the story of the season in October. According to the pundits, they are “one of the league’s best” and “one of the deepest.” But through six games, they’ve been the story for a totally different reason. They have hemorrhaged shots, they are constantly out of position, and they have forced Henrik Lundqvist to make spectacular saves. This is not the start this six man unit wanted. Only Kevin Klein and Keith Yandle are off to good starts.

While much of the vitriol has been directed at Dan Girardi, Dan Boyle, and Marc Staal, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Ryan McDonagh has truly been struggling. While we don’t know if he’s still dealing with lingering injury issues from last season or whether it is dependent on his partner, we do know that he simply hasn’t been the number-one defenseman the Rangers need.

Through six games, McDonagh’s possession numbers (44.2% CF) are well below his career averages (roughly 50%). He’s facing the same level of competition, as his 17.6 TOI competition this year is in line with 17.7 last year (This measure the time on ice of the competition he faces. The theory is that the better players get more ice time, thus is greater competition). McDonagh has started 41.1% of his shifts in the offensive zone thus far, compared to 45.6% last year. That’s a pretty big drop overall, but through six games it just means he’s started ten fewer shifts in the offensive zone (23 OZ starts vs. 33 DZ starts).

McDonagh is also seeing a drop in quality of teammates thus far this season. Using the same TOI stats above, McDonagh is playing with guys that average 14 minutes per game, compared to 16.7 minutes last year. That may not seem like much, but that’s the difference between being out there with first liners or second/third liners. Since it’s been established that quality of teammates has a larger effect than quality of competition, this drop in teammate quality is worth noting.

Since his numbers are significantly worse, we need to try and identify the specific plays that have been uncharacteristic of McDonagh.

ryan mcdonagh

Let’s look at this play above, when Alex Galchenyuk gets a high quality chance as McDoangh slides by. On this play, J.T. Miller coughed up the puck to Lars Eller in the neutral zone, and Eller got it to Galchenyuk. McDonagh was back on defense (Dan Girardi is nowhere in sight), but he had help with backcheckers. His man is Galchenyuk, and he went full snow angel to minimal effect. The ineffective snow angel left Galchenyuk all day to tee up a shot.

Now you can argue that Galchenyuk is pretty skilled, and that McDonagh was trying to cut his move to the middle. The problem is that McDonagh’s slide starts outside the circle, and Galchenyuk cuts back anyway.

ryan mcdonagh

From the same game, we have McDonagh behind the net getting his outlet pass picked off by Max Pacioretty. Now there are two things here, the first is that not a single Ranger is in the defensive zone and open, nor did either player (Girardi or Chris Kreider) try to even get open. Both were watching McDonagh, and that doesn’t leave him with many options. However that doesn’t really excuse the poor decision to bank an outlet pass with Pacioretty already creeping over. The puck came around the far boards, where there is a lot of room for McDoangh to buy time.

There are two similarities in both plays. The first is that McDonagh made a very uncharacteristic play, something we don’t usually see from him. The second is that these plays happened due to lack of support/turnovers from teammates. These are just two examples from the Montreal game, but it’s a common theme that has become a problem.

ryan mcdonagh

Courtesy of war-on-ice

How much of this is on poor teammates, specifically the poor play of Girardi to date? That’s almost impossible to quantify without extended time away from him, however we can use the chart above as a start. Each point on this graph is one game. McDonagh was paired with Girardi until the right-most point (when he was paired with Klein), which is around 55% CF for the game yesterday against the Devils. When paired with Girardi, McDonagh was below 40% possession twice, and barely above it once, which is just downright awful.

Regardless of the teammate effect, McDonagh does need to start making better decisions with the puck. He’s the best defenseman on the team, and while he he cannot do it alone, he needs to lead the charge. Perhaps pairing him with Klein, who is better able to play in Alain Vigneault’s system, is a start to McDonagh’s improvement.

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