BOSTON — Anyone who watched the New York Rangers play on Saturday could reach only one conclusion in regard to the internal roster decisions being weighed.
It’s time to sell, sell, sell.
Whatever happens in the 11 remaining games before the Olympic break is largely irrelevant. Allowing such a small sample to cloud team president Chris Drury’s judgment would be shortsighted and irresponsible. We’ve seen enough evidence in the last year and a half to know that the team he’s assembled doesn’t have it.
Kiefer Sherwood is a nice complementary piece on a contending team, but these Rangers are far from that.
They were embarrassed by the Boston Bruins, dropping a 10-2 stinker in front of a nationally-televised audience. It was the most goals they’ve allowed since Feb. 6, 2009, with the TD Garden mocking their Original Six rival with chants of “We want 10!” after the Bruins got it to nine.
They asked, and they received.
Pavel Zacha only needed a little more than half the game to earn his first career hat trick, for goodness sake. Marat Khusnutdinov completed his own early in the third period, marking the first time the Rangers have allowed two players to notch hat tricks in the same contest since Mario Lemieux and Joe Mullen did it for the Pittsburgh Penguins on April 9, 1993.
New York won the Stanley Cup the next season, but this version of bumbling Blueshirts feels a long way from that lofty perch.
“That’s as bad as it gets,” captain J.T. Miller said. “I don’t know, man. The only thing that really matters now is this should sting — like, this should suck. This should make you want to puke, and then respond tomorrow and the next day. The only thing that matters is a response.”
The Rangers (20-20-6) have now lost three in a row and seven of their last nine. We can go back even further and point out that they have just two regulation wins in their last 17 games. They’ve been one of the NHL’s lowest-scoring teams all season, and lately their defense is crumbling, with those problems exacerbated since star goalie Igor Shesterkin and No. 1 defenseman Adam Fox both were announced to be out with lower-body injuries earlier this week.
Back in October and early November, the Rangers could point to solid underlying numbers as evidence that they might turn things around. But after registering a 57.05 percent expected goals-for rate through their first 16 games, they plummeted to 46.34 percent in their next 29, according to Evolving Hockey. That will surely sink even lower once Saturday’s thrashing is factored in.
Coach Mike Sullivan acknowledged the slippage postgame, and when pressed on what’s gone wrong, he pointed to “details.”
“A lot of it boils down to details and commitment,” he said. “For a long stretch of the season, I thought we were pretty stingy defensively, and certainly all the numbers suggested that. I think we’ve gotten away from it a little bit lately. The other aspect of it is, we’ve played a lot of hockey. We haven’t had an opportunity to practice much, and I do think that has something to do with it also, because you don’t get a chance to get reps at it. But we’re no different than any other team in that regard. We’ve got to get back to being a stingier team defensively, and we can create offense off of it.”
The outlook gets even bleaker when you consider the Rangers’ place in the standings. Saturday’s loss dropped them back into the basement of the Eastern Conference based on points percentage and six points behind the Buffalo Sabres and Washington Capitals for a wild-card spot. Both have games in hand, as well — and we haven’t even mentioned the five other teams New York would have to leapfrog to move into playoff position.
The increasingly long odds are likely adding to the tension in the locker room, particularly for those who may soon find themselves on the trade block.
“Everyone understands how important it is to win every game, take every point,” said Artemi Panarin, a pending free agent who will be at the center of rumors in the coming weeks. “You can’t play loose when you have that kind of situation in the standings.”
In what world does it make sense to act as if they’re still in it and further mortgage the future? That’s one of the reasons they’re in this mess in the first place.
They aren’t one or two pieces away, at least not the kind of pieces that will be available before the March 6 trade deadline. They need to completely refresh this roster with speed, skill, and most importantly, youth, and that will require short-term pain for the sake of long-term gain. They only have their own shaky track record of drafting, development and poor asset management to blame.
There were examples all over the ice. It started with Braden Schneider, who was part of what was supposed to be a franchise-changing 2020 draft class, getting torched along the boards by Khusnutdinov for Boston’s opening goal. Less than five minutes later, it was defenseman Will Borgen, whom Drury not only traded for last season but promptly extended, falling while trying to defend Zacha right before his first goal. There was a whole lot of sloppiness between then and the Bruins’ third goal, which came after a needless slashing penalty on Miller — another player Drury targeted in spite of his diminishing production and drama-filled exit with the Vancouver Canucks — forced New York to defend a five-on-three that ended with Zacha finding the back of the net for the second time.
That was only the first period.
It got worse from there, just like the Rangers have as this season progresses. Saturday was a rock-bottom moment, but it’s time to stop pretending this team is anything other than a sinking ship.
“It’s almost got to be a complete reset,” center Vincent Trocheck said. “Just completely start over from scratch, and it starts with heart.”
Here are six more thoughts from the latest worst loss of the season:
1. The Rangers’ diminished depth is a major issue, with a bottom six that could easily be confused with an AHL Hartford lineup. But this team will only go as far as their top players take them. Miller has talked multiple times about “dragging the team into the fight,” but he hasn’t been able to do so on several occasions this season. Credit him for saying the right things after these losses, but those words feel increasingly empty.
“That’s a game where you’re looking for leadership, and I’ve got to be better,” he said. “It’s just unacceptable. Your leaders shouldn’t let games — and I’m talking about myself — get like that. The crowd should never be chanting, “We want 10!’ Look within. Don’t try to point fingers and make excuses.”
2. I asked Sullivan a similar question about needing more from the leadership group, but he didn’t want to go down that road.
“Listen, I’m not gonna sit here and point fingers on why we’re where we’re at,” he said. “Where we’re at is because of all of us, and we’ve got to figure out the solutions to try to get back on the right track and give ourselves a chance. Here’s what I know. We’re a way better team than what we put on the ice today, and for whatever reason, it was a struggle. I don’t have the answers on why, but we’ll work with the players, and we’ll dig in, and we’ll find a way to play to the level that we think we’re capable of.”
3. The only guys who feel like they’ve been pulling their weight lately are Panarin and Mika Zibanejad, who combined on an early goal that briefly gave the Rangers a 1-0 lead. Panarin is now riding a six-game point streak, while Zibanejad has registered at least one point for five games in a row. They both have 11 points during those streaks (two goals and nine assists for Panarin; five goals and six assists for Zibanejad), but the problem is that no one else is scoring. The fact that New York is still losing while those guys are clicking serves as further proof that this roster simply doesn’t have enough firepower.
4. One goal wasn’t going to change the outcome in this lopsided game, but the one that stung the most came at the end of the first period. Schneider desperately reached out his stick to stop Zacha’s power-play attempt as it was heading toward the goal line, with play continuing after what looked like a huge save from the defenseman. But after the clock ran out in the period and the teams started heading to the locker room, officials reviewed the play and determined that the puck crossed. They had to come back out to finish replaying the remaining 33 seconds. It was the right call, and it turned a close 2-1 game (even though the Rangers had been thoroughly outplayed) into a 3-1 deficit heading into the second period.
5. Sam Carrick attempted to rally the troops by dropping the gloves with Bruins center Mark Kastelic after Zacha completed his hat trick to make it 6-1 at the 11:29 mark of the second period. He’s been a warrior this season, and the only Ranger who’s regularly answered the bell, while Matt Rempe is forbidden from fighting due to ongoing pain with his injured left thumb, but why must he consistently be asked to manufacture momentum? Here’s an idea: How about playing better instead of making your teammate put his head at risk time after time?
6. I’ll give the last word to Trocheck, who was as dejected as I’ve seen in his four seasons with New York. He’s been taking these losses as hard as anyone, but he also represents perhaps the Rangers’ most appealing (and realistic) trade asset if they decide to go deeper with the forthcoming teardown.
“I don’t know if forgetting about it is the answer,” he said. “I feel like we should be embarrassed right now, and I think we are. I don’t think the solution is forgetting about it. I think it’s learning from it. Hopefully, we can take this game and the feeling we have in our stomachs right now, and want to never have that again.”