New York Rangers’ Alain Vigenault is Coaching For His Job Tonight

After the New York Rangers lost a pathetic excuse for a hockey game on Sunday night, a game four loss could be costly for their chances of staying alive in the playoffs. Alain Vigneault has to find a way to energize his team or he might pay the price.

The New York Rangers couldn’t have played any worse than they did in game three of their first round series against the Montreal Canadiens.

The team played with the urgency and energy that you would see in a preseason game on Sunday night. The team had only 12 shots on goal over the course of the first two periods and only 14 in the first 52 minutes of action in their 3-1 loss.

They couldn’t generate any momentum because of horrible passing, terribly undisciplined penalties and lack of adjustments. The Canadiens trapped them in the neutral zone for 60 minutes, and the team did nothing to adjust, leading to minimal zone time or scoring chances.

While yes, the players are the ones who need to execute the gameplan in order to succeed, if their head coach doesn’t put them in the best positions to succeed, ultimately there is nothing they can do.

That is essentially where we are at with head coach Alain Vigneault at this point, and the Rangers are beginning to tone him out, it seems.

According to Amanda Stein of TSN, the Rangers had a very lackadaisical and uninspired practice yesterday morning.

That is a bad sign for what the rest of this series could entail.

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Only 20 teams have come back in a series from a 3-1 deficit. Even though the Rangers have done it a few times, this iteration of the team doesn’t seem to have the gumption to pull it off. Another first round exit doesn’t bode well for Vigneault keeping his job going forward.

And if the head coach, who was signed to a two-year extension on January 30th, is in fact canned, it will be a firing well deserved.

Vigneault’s failure to adjust is well documented, and his poor coaching decisions have led to many of the team’s shortcomings, including their game two loss. Vigneault put the pairing of Nick Holden and Marc Staal–who had been struggling all game, much less all season–out on the ice in the finals seconds.

The other thing that could prove to have Vigneault on the first flight out of town as soon as the series ends is the team’s lack of success at home.

For a combination of reasons, the Garden is no longer a difficult place for the opposition to play. Instead, it’s a difficult place for the Rangers to play, as they were one win over .500 at home in the regular season and have dropped six straight playoff games by a combined score of 21-4 in the building. It’s a joke and an embarrassment and a lot of the blame has to go to Vigneault and his staff.

Tonight’s Lineup

In a last ditch effort to keep this series within reach, it looks as if Vigneault will employ his best lineup to date tonight, even though he kind of backed himself into it.

If the Rangers have any chance of winning this series or winning tonight’s game, they need to be active on their skates, get pucks deep and get men in front of Carey Price so he can’t see the puck.

Next: Arniel, Beukeboom on the hot seat

His fate may already be sealed by the response he has been getting from his players, but If Alain Vigneault wants to keep his job behind the bench on Broadway, he will need to make this happen, or else…