New York Rangers: What should the team’s goal for next season be?
The New York Rangers are a team in a state of flux with a lot of uncertainties. What is a realistic goal for the 2018-2019 season?
This unfamiliar feeling of watching the postseason on the couch is a weird one. The New York Rangers have been perennial contenders for the better part of a decade but were never able to get over the hump. Now, the team would be lucky to make the postseason next year with the talent in currently holds.
Putting aside the elephant in the room of who the next coach will be, things are unknown up and down the lineup. The blue line will be a conglomerate of defensemen trying to prove themselves. The forward group is top heavy and lacks bottom sixth depth. In net, as always, will be Henrik Lundqvist, who for year 14 will try and stave off the aging process for another season.
This brings the question, what should the Rangers be trying to do this season? Being that there is so much uncertainty and so many players trying to grow, it’ll be tricky to forecast. However, what the team should be trying to do is pretty cut and dry.
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The Rangers have enough resources that they can field a competitive team next year while giving young players ample time to grow. Ultimately, the biggest goal for next season needs to be player development.
The kids are alright
For the first time in what seems like forever, the Rangers have a few exciting prospects. Both Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil will be the cornerstones of the team for the coming decade. Both forwards will be 19 years old and have ample opportunity to get playing time and grow. This is probably the most important part of next season.
Getting the team’s first-round picks up to NHL speed where they are ready in 2020 to seriously compete is vital to the organization’s future. Being that the Rangers are likely at least one year away from competing, it should be an organizational mission to get young players as much playing time as possible.
This should be the biggest difference between the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 season. Playing veterans like David Desharnais, Paul Carey, and Cody McLeod was detrimental to the development of younger players. Using low ceiling players that are known quantities was a poor decision. Alain Vigneault chose to play it safe in a lost season. Conventional logic would have been for Vigneault to gamble on young players with higher possible outcomes.
The veterans
The Rangers have a decently talented group of veterans who with the right supplemental talent can hang with the best teams in the league. The team’s top line of Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Pavel Buchnevich is a talented group that can produce at a high level. Although these forwards are considered veterans on the team, the oldest of them, Kreider, is only 27 years old. With the right combinations, the Boston College graduate can likely post his first 30 goal season.
Outside of the top line talent, there are two players who regressed last season, Brady Skjei and Jimmy Vesey that need to get back to where they were. Both struggled last season and it cannot be understated that playing on a bad team definitely hindered their growth. Skjei has shown flashes of an elite defenseman but looked out of his depth last season in a top pair role. As for Vesey, he needs to play at a more consistent level. There is a place for the Harvard graduate on the team, but he has to find his scoring touch more than he has.
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It is clear that next season will be about player development and getting closer to competing. There is a small chance that the Rangers compete next year with this group, but it is unlikely. The goal for the organization should be a return to the postseason in 2019-2020. A strong developmental season will go a long way in getting to that goal.