New York Rangers: What is the team’s identity going forward?

The New York Rangers have been a team without an identity for the better part of the last two seasons. With a new head coach and prospects expected to make the jump, what can be expected?

Successful NHL teams have a sustained style of play or identity over the course of a season. There are different molds in which a team can play that fuel different types of identities. The New York Rangers have had three different identities during this decade and they are tied to the team’s different head coaches.

Going all the way back to 2010, the team’s identity was oriented around grinding play in the corners and blocking shots. Under then coach John Tortorella, the team’s goal was to concede as little as possible and to score only one or two goals to win. The 2010-2011 New York Rangers only conceded 195 goals during the course of the entire season, 34 less than the league average.

Following Tortorella’s dismissal, the Rangers of course hired Alain Vigneault who brought his unique style of Western Conference hockey to the big apple. Although not as different now, at the time, the two conferences played different styles of hockey. Up until about 2015, the Western Conference game was oriented around speed and possession whereas the Eastern Conference was centered around grinding and eking out narrow victories.

Under Vigneault, the Rangers skill was tapped into at a level that enabled several players to have career best years. In the team’s best regular season with Vigneault, 2014-2015, the team finished third in both goals for and goals against. With such a well distributed burden of responsibility, it is no surprise that the team won the President’s Trophy.

Where it went wrong

Of course, Vigneualt’s Rangers tenure crashed and burned in year four. The once deep team that boasted a complete lineup top to bottom had failed to replace its once great defensive depth. Instead of a well rounded team that could depend on any player at any given time, there were serious liabilities on the ice during crunch time.

The Rangers identity of scoring through depth and overwhelming the other team went away. In its place was a frantic team that often could not stop the snowball effect. The team simply didn’t come out of the dressing room ready to play this past season. The players on the ice would concede an early goal and the game would spiral out of hand.

With no clear identity or style of play to fall back on, the Rangers went through the motions for the final 40 minutes of the game. Those lopsided scores like 6-1 against the Boston Bruins, 6-3 against the Ottawa Senators, 7-4 against the Philadelphia Flyers and 7-2 to the New York Islanders stem from the total disarray. For all intents and purposes, the roster of last year’s team was in theory better than that of the 2016-2017 team.

Yet the result was far worse because at least in part there was nothing for the players to fall back on. Meaninglessly dumping the puck into the zone and hoping to regain possession. The biggest culprit in this identity crisis was the team’s defense. The once deep Rangers boasted one of, if not the worst, defensive units in the entire league. There was no longer an air of comfort around the team if they had to hold onto a late lead.

What Quinn brings

Thus far, the New York Rangers newest head coach, David Quinn has preached the importance of quick transition. In the modern NHL in which pretty much every player can skate well, the slow and clunky players get exposed on a nightly basis.

"“You want to play a fast game, I don’t think a coach has ever said they want to play a slow game. We want to play a fast, puck pursuit, puck possession game built around good structural defense. That is something that, when you look around the league and see how things have gone in the playoffs, it’s a track meet but also teams that are responsible defensively. For any team to have success those three things need to be part of the philosophy. Sitting here and saying what we are going to do is one thing but coaching is getting people to do it. Our job as coaches is to get players to do it, not to tell them to do it. That will be the challenge.”"

This seems like a workable system and style of play in which the Ranger’s young group can work with. Hopefully when Quinn describes good structural defense he is not referring to an overload system. The team had run an overload system during the previous several seasons under Vigneault. The system entails both defenseman being on the same side of the ice to pressure the puck carrier and regain possession. However, it also exposes the opposite side of the ice to a back door pass, something that happened at nauseam this past season.

In all likelihood, the New York Rangers do not have the personnel to be good this upcoming season. However, Quinn will have the season to impress his style of play upon the team’s young guys. Over time the molding of players to fit a system within a prospect’s development is what will make or break the team’s plan. If guys like Filip Chytil can take to Quinn’s uptempo system and give the team a defined style of play the Rangers just might make it out of this rebuild alive.