New York Rangers: Does the team need an outright enforcer?

Training camp and the preseason are for roster experimentation. The New York Rangers dressed an enforcer, Cody McLeod, for the first time on Saturday night.

As opening night of the 2018-2019 season looms on the horizon, the NHL is moving more and more into the future. In a sport with a hard salary cap, using a roster spot and cap space on a one dimensional player is inefficient. Any waste of either leaves a team exposed and waiting to be exploited. The New York Rangers’ coaching staff has a decision on their hands.

For the week or so that training camp has been open, the Rangers’ new head coach David Quinn has really beat the drum for some aggressiveness. The former Boston University coach wants the Rangers to play with some grit and be difficult to play against. The team has not had a sandpaper side in a number of years.

While individual players like Mats Zuccarello and Brendan Smith have done their part in years past, the team has overall been easy to play against. One player being a pest is nothing for another team to manage. On the other hand, if an entire team embraces the idea of being relentless on the puck, it’s a different story.

The Rangers have a single straight forward enforcer, Cody McLeod, in training camp. Does the team need him in the regular season?

The reality

While the enforcer has a revered role in the dressing room and amongst those in hockey culture, their time is coming to an end in the NHL. While the league will probably never outright ban fighting, the pre-arranged and obligatory enforcer on enforcer fights are a thing of the past. Fighting has gone down every single season since 2012 according to a hockeyfights.com report.

Since the most recent lockout which washed away half of the 2012-2013 season, the league’s hard cap has phased the position out. At one point, enforcer was a marquee role that garnered a significant cap hit. The Rangers at one point were paying the late Derek Boogaard north of $2 million per season. While the enforcer was the best in the league, he provided little else on the ice.

The sweet spot in the modern NHL is the player that can be a pest, fight and contribute in a conventional way. The best in the entire league is without a doubt Brad Marchand of the Boston Bruins. The forward is a pest to play against and one of the league’s best goal scorers. This is the type of player that the league is trending towards, a jack of all trades.

The closest to Marchand that the Rangers have is Zuccarello. While the Norwegian forward will never take any nonsense from the other team, he never crosses a line like the Bruins’ forward. New York has been a controlled team that does not cross over into that realm for the longest time.

If nothing else, the game against the Predators from last season is proof that McLeod cannot even be a goon effectively. In a less than five minute span, both Jimmy Vesey and Marc Staal were injured by predatory hits. Instead of McLeod, it was Ranger defenseman Brady Skjei that dropped the gloves to try and reign the game back in.

If a team is going to dress an enforcer, he actually has to be a deterrent. The Rangers would be better off riding with a combination of Smith, Beleskey and Adam McQuaid for this upcoming season.

They are both able to contribute in ways aside from punching other people in the head. Without a doubt, McLeod can’t even do that well. Ask McQuaid how bad of a fighter McLeod was when the two fought twice in the same game last season.