david quinn

David Quinn made a questionable move on Saturday. He benched Filip Chytil in lieu of Connor Brickley, making a comment about Chytil’s play of late. He added that him and lil Fil spoke about how his game has been slipping of late and how this is developmental, depending on your opinion of tough-love coaching. That alone is curious enough, but then yesterday he made an additional comment regarding getting Chytil back into the game. Quinn mentioned that you simply can’t have a player like that out if the lineup, which is strange because the thing is that Quinn has total and exclusive control over the matter. Ah, well, not a big deal.

That’s right, I said it’s not a big deal. I have two claims to back up that statement, both fairly subjective and the first one a matter on which reasonable people can disagree. To start, even if Quinn has made some bizarre decisions this season, he’s made more good ones than bad ones, but that’s just me. The second bit though, and this in my opinion is fairly incontrovertible (just kidding, reasonable people can always disagree, although if you do I’m just not sure what game you were watching), is that the Rangers were absolutely dominant against the Sabres and demonstrated clearly perhaps for the first time what a proper David Quinn win looks like.

Let’s start with the obvious: Kevin Hayes’ standout performance. He was the pivot upon which the often-occurring cycle play hinged in Buffalo, and made full use of his varied skillset – skating, reach, puck protection, and size – to deftly set up complex plays and maintain extended pressure. It’s what you really want to see, or not, or whatever, depending on where you stand as far as trading or keeping the BC Boy. Anyways.

Underlying that shoutout is the cycle game. The Rangers, at least a half dozen times by my count, set up in the Sabres’ end for extended periods of time throughout the game, never taking their foot off the gas. The relentless pressure of course had a lot to do with their top centers, Hayes more so than Mika Zibanejad in this particular contest, and with depth. Young guys who need to be upping their game did, with Tony DeAngelo making fewer boneheaded mistakes than slick passes and Pavel Buchnevich lurking just-so around the post for a quick tally in addition to his split-second timing utilized to set up Jimmy Vesey’s fly-by. Then of course there was Vlad Namestnikov, showing that he indeed is valuable depth scoring despite his streakiness. The Rangers were quite literally unstoppable. When Jack Eichel and Rasmus Dahlin are flubbing entry-level plays you know it’s a good one.

Now, a major caveat is that the Sabres are bad. It won’t be this easy against a better team, as we saw during the game versus Toronto (stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the Rangers’ goalie stole that one). Still, it’s the most lucid we’ve seen Quinn’s game-plan in his tenure, and is something to look forward to in the coming years. Barring a sudden descent into madness, games like that and their increasing frequency over the course of Quinn’s contract are going to mean the former BU skipper will be sticking around.

What makes me say that? Well, it’s the same thing that reminds me not to hold my breath waiting for many more games like that this season. You see, and this is something we all should be aware of by now, but this roster is not very good. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching them play, or that I’m not behind them 110% night after night, but it’s a basic fact we all need to acknowledge. It’s also a reason to be hopeful however, because even if there simply isn’t enough pure skill in this iteration of the Blueshirts depth chart, there will be soon.

I am an optimist, consistently when it comes to hockey and a bit more here-and-there otherwise. I think Gorton’s decision making has largely been sound, and am looking forward to how this trade deadline and draft go. Obviously we won’t know if he’s smoke and mirrors until we get a feel for what this roster will look like in its more complete form, but I’m confident in my belief that next year’s Rangers team will look better than this year’s, and that we’ll likely see that trend continue. How long that takes or what/what sized bumps in the road there might be is tough to say, but as with Quinn it seems to me more good than bad.

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