When the Rangers announced just before game time that Artemi Panarin would sit due to roster management pending trades, you had an idea how the game would go. Still winless against the Islanders in the Matthew Schaefer era, the Rangers seemingly had no interest in the game and hung their goaltender out to dry. With everything going on around them, you’d think one of these supposed leaders would try to calm things down, but as we have learned over the last season and a half, this team is soft at its very core.
Speaking of those soft leaders, Vincent Trocheck, what you have done for me lately? I have never seen a hockey player more visibly checked out from his team. It seems he and JT Miller are cut from the same cloth as amplifiers. When things are good, they are good. When things are bad, they are bad. Now with Trocheck, he won’t put up points in droves without Panarin, so his value may dip a bit in a perceived slump. Hopefully Bill Guerin is still interested after the Olympics.
Spencer Martin is simply not an NHL goaltender, and in a way it’s hard not to fee bad for the guy. He’s in an impossible situation. He made a few great saves in the game, but the volume proved too much. The team won’t pick themselves up and play better in front of him to make his life easier either, they’ve instead resorted to coasting and waiting. We get people are human, but this is just brutal to watch.
Hopefully all this leads to kids getting more ice time. Mike Sullivan is going to be here longer than two seasons, so as his toys get taken away, hopefully he steps up and plays the kids more. This is not the season to be risk averse, we are long past that. It’s nice that Gabe Perreault is deploying as a top line winger at 5 on 5, but now it’s time to put him on PP1. The same for Morrow and PP1, as it’s his skill set and the Rangers need to see if he can be a top powerplay QB. Mike Sullivan is a terrific coach, and you can’t deny it from the X’s and O’s, but he is really starting to worry me how much he relies on veterans who ought to not be as relied upon.
At the timing of this recap, Panarin has not been dealt. Though last night is likely what to expect going forward. Mika Zibanejad will be the only active scorer in the top six. The team may look a little less dead today, but it looks like many are just coasting now. The remaining 28 games are going to be quite the spectacle.
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