You may find yourself. Living in a shotgun shack. And you may find yourself. In another part of the world. And you may find yourself. Behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house. With a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself. “Well … how did I get here?”
Well we got here because the Rangers can’t score. Not the depth, the stars. The Rangers got shutout for the 7th time this season, 6 of them on home ice. And you may ask yourself. “Well…how do we fix it?” And we are here to say, “not without the stars doing their part.” That’s it. That’s what the Rangers need right now. They need the stars to pull their weight. No team dressing Mika Zibanejad, JT Miller, Artemi Panarin, and Vincent Trocheck should be shutout in 20% of their games.
You knew we were in for a bad game early on. Evander Kane and Matthew Robertson were skating to the corner, Robertson hit a Linesman who was trying to get out of the way, and Kane went in all alone and scored on Jonathan Quick, who had a rare bad game in net. That was rather symbolic of the season thus far, as the Rangers held Vancouver to just 17 shots on net, but between a rare off night for Quick and the ineptitude that is the Rangers offense, it was yet another shutout loss.
The Rangers “vaunted” five forward powerplay squandered their four chances, playing like individuals instead of a five man unit. I said it before, and I will keep saying it, I will never understand why the coaching staff insists on throwing out this unit time and time again. There is no teamwork, there is no creativity, and the shot selection is questionable at best. Adam Fox won’t make a difference if the other four can’t score.
Something is rotten to the core here, and nothing makes sense anymore. This power play should be a murderer’s row constantly moving and all being scoring threats at different times, and they just, aren’t. I don’t know how many more looks Mike Sullivan and David Quinn need to see that five forwards doesn’t work, but an adjustment needs to be made.
It’s time we had the Gabe Perreault conversation again. We can’t expect him to come and be a savior on this team, and I think everyone knows this. But the Rangers are directionless and there is definitely player movement on the horizon. I was hoping the Rangers would wait to bring Perreault up closer to the Olympic break, but I think we have our answer on what this team is, and it’s not pretty.
The Rangers are mediocre, if that, and could use a fresh skilled rookie who by all accounts is really playing well in the AHL. At this point, it’s not about the playoffs, since this team won’t even win a game in the first round. It’s audition time for some of the Hartford boys to see if they are a solution and to get a head start on how the team could look next year. Will Perreault be in the lineup in St Louis Thursday?
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