New York Rangers midseason report cards: Goalies, coaches, front office
In round two of our New York Rangers’ midseason report cards, we take a look at the goaltending and the coaching staff and how they’ve performed so far.
The New York Rangers have had a very up and down season. They started the season off 3-7-2 and looked to be completely out of the playoff picture. Now they sit in third place in the Metropolitan Division with a 22-14-5 record entering Sunday night’s game.
A big reason–some would argue the only reason–for the team’s drastic turnaround has been their goaltending. The team now ranks eighth in the league in goals against per game (2.7). Goalie coach Benoit Allaire has worked his magic yet again, perhaps the only coach to do anything positive this year.
There is still plenty of season left, but how are the coaches and goalies doing so far?
Henrik Lundqvist
After an awful October where he went 3-4-2 and posted a 3.21 goals against average and a .898 save percentage, Lundqvist has turned back the clock and has looked phenomenal. Since November 1st, he has notched a 2.18 goals against average and a .935 save percentage.
Lundqvist has more or less kept his team in games single-handedly. A huge reason for the team’s recent stretch of “success” is the King’s brilliance between the pipes.
Especially in a stretch of eight games now where the Rangers have not won a game in regulation, the above graphic tells you everything that you need to know.
In fact, according to Corsica.hockey, Lundqvist ranks third in the NHL in goals saved with 10 on the season just behind Sergei Bobrovsky and Andrei Vasilevskiy.
If it wasn’t for his rocky start to the year Lundqvist would probably be a top Vezina Trophy candidate. For those who have watched him over the last two and a half months, however, Lundqvist is a very real Hart Trophy candidate for league MVP.
GRADE: A+
Ondrej Pavelec
Pavelec is the latest success story of Rangers’ goalie wizard Benoit Allaire. After spending his entire nine-year career with the Atlanta Thrashers/Winnipeg Jets franchise, Pavelec is coming into his own as the backup goalie to Henrik Lundqvist. It took Pavelec a few games to get into a rhythm, but he has looked miraculous in his limited opportunities to play.
In seven starts and 10 appearances, Pavelec has posted a career-low 2.55 goals against average to go along with a stellar .926 save percentage, also a career high. If you dive deeper into the numbers, though, Pavelec has been nearly unbeatable in his last four starts. Against Pittsburgh, Dallas, Washington and Vegas, Pavelec has stopped 147 of 153 shots on net, good for a .961 save percentage.
Pavelec came into the season playing a very aggressive–and at times, too aggressive–style in net. The problem with that he is not quick enough moving side-to-side. Allaire, as he usually advices, has worked with Pavelec to tone down the aggressiveness and stay a little deeper in net. It has paid off wonders for the Czech.
GRADE: A
Alain Vigneault
Where do I begin?
I guess, while it’s fresh, let’s start with healthy scratching his third-leading scorer Pavel Buchnevich for no apparent reason and then responding to the media saying “it just seemed like the right thing to do” instead of giving a legitimate response.
Vigneault has been playing favorites and making crazy personnel decisions since 2013-14. The difference between now and then is that his roster in 13-14 was foolproof and now that his team has flaws, he allows them to be exposed without trying to fix them or worse; even realizing that they are there.
Vigneault’s lack of adjustments have crippled this team since the 2014-15 Eastern Conference Finals and haven’t stopped since.
Vigneault has never heard of the phrase “don’t fix what ain’t broken” because at multiple times this season, the one thing that worked, the KZB, was torn to shreds like a 1,000 piece Lego set in a five-year-old’s living room.
The coach reportedly lost the room back in October and his job was saved when he decided to put the line back together for the third period of the game against the Golden Knights, when Buchnevich, his whipping boy, tallied two goals in the final frame to give the Rangers the lead.
Until Vigneault is gone, no matter what moves this team makes personnel-wise, they won’t reach their full potential. Unless the team makes a deep playoff run this year, something they look incapable of doing unless Lundqvist continues to play out of his mind, then this could be Vigneault’s last regular season games as the team’s head coach.
GRADE: D-
Scott Arniel
Arniel, in his fifth season as the Rangers’ associate coach and power play guru, got his team off to a hot start with the man advantage early on. The Rangers ranked in the top half of the league in power play percentage for much of the season.
Over the past couple of months, however, the power play has fallen off dramatically. The team now ranks 18th in the league on the man advantage (18.5) this season, a number that drastically needs to improve sooner rather than later if they want to make a playoff push.
The team doesn’t have an excuse anymore for poor power play numbers. Free agent acquisition Kevin Shattenkirk ranks fourth in the league in power play points among defensemen in the last four seasons.
Arniel needs to get the power play back to where it was at in the beginning of the season or he could find his way out of Broadway at season’s end if head coach Vigneault is set free too.
GRADE: C-
Lindy Ruff
The case of Lindy Ruff’s performance has been a strange one so far. The team’s penalty kill is now under his jurisdiction after taking over for Jeff Beukeboom in the offseason. Ruff also oversees the defense.
After a difficult start to the season, the Rangers’ penalty kill has become one of their strong suits for the first time since 2013-2014. The team currently ranks 5th down a man, killing penalties at an 83.7 percent clip. While the percentage has been great, the team has yet to score a shorthanded goal thus far. With the plethora of offensive talent they deploy on the PK, that is very surprising.
For all of that, Ruff has earned a B+ this season. In the subject of defense coach, however, Ruff needs to go find a tutor.
After revamping the defense in the offseason by buying Dan Girardi out of his contract, re-signing Brendan Smith and employing Kevin Shattenkirk, the Rangers’ defense looks worse. Maybe this is due to Vigneault pairing Nick Holden and Ryan McDonagh together and from their not balancing the pairs correctly, but every single defender minus Brady Skjei has seen way too many blown coverages this season.
GRADE: C
Jeff Gorton
Jeff Gorton’s offseason performance left a lot to be desired. The Derek Stepan trade has not looked great for the team so far–although it hasn’t looked great for the Coyotes either. The Dan Girardi buyout and the Kevin Shattenkirk signing were both very well done and it appeared as if $4.5 million annually was a good price for Brendan Smith.
But Jeff Gorton isn’t having a great semester for the Rangers and his grade is going to reflect it.
Gorton’s biggest failure so far this season is doing nothing about his coach’s antics. The past has shown that if you give Alain Vigneault one of his toys the team will suffer for it. That’s what Vigneault has had this year with Nick Holden and Steven Kampfer.
Gorton also should’ve done something when he saw his coach leaving one of his best assets in Pavel Buchnevich up in the press box to rot so 29-year-old Paul Carey–who, in fairness, has been okay–could play.
Next: Midseason report cards: Top six forwards
That can’t continue to happen. While the roster that he built does have flaws, his coach has inflated each and every one of them. If he doesn’t choose to let his coach go at the end of the season then Gorton will get an F for 2017-2018, but as we stand now, based on a few of the moves he made in the offseason and the drafting of center Filip Chytil late in the first round, Gorton will pass.