New York Rangers: Does it make sense to have a consistent lineup?

Only two weeks into the 2018-2019 season and the New York Rangers are fully experiencing the growing pains of a rebuild.

As an organization, the New York Rangers are trending in the right direction. There are long-term assets in the AHL, developmental leagues or Europe being groomed for the future. However, the big club still has to play games at the NHL level while the prospects are brewing for another season.

The bizarre thing is, even though the team is supposed to be rebuilding, there are just four prospects still developing. Typically, when the image of a team starting over comes to mind, there are lots of pimple riddled faces, a frustrated coach and lots of losing. However, the Rangers feature Brett Howden, Filip Chytil, Tony DeAngelo and Neal Pionk.

Outside of those four, the rest of the lineup, for the most part, are finished products. Come age 24, players are pretty much who they are going to be for their entire career. Players don’t magically get better in their mid-20s, in fact, 25 is when the production plateau starts in terms of player development.

The reality of a rebuilding team is that the coaching staff has the freedom to experiment. The organization has clearly given David Quinn free reign to bench players at will as he’s healthy scratched 11 different players and not rolled out the same lineup for consecutive games yet this season.

The clown car of defensemen has pretty much-made lineup consistency impossible. The real question is, does it really matter that the lines and defensive pairs are consistently juggled?

The theory

The prevailing logic in coaching, especially at the NHL level, is to juggle until it works. So, if a line or defensive combination is struggling to play well, the coach should break it up in hopes of finding a new one that works better. Think about how often Alain Vigneault would juggle the team’s lines in hopes of finding a late goal.

Obviously, if a line is playing well, a coach wouldn’t break it up. This wisdom makes sense in a vacuum. The drawback being if there is constant juggling, the players don’t get a true feeling for each other and struggle to get into a true rhythm over the course of an entire season.

The reason Chris Kreider, Pavel Buchnevich and Mika Zibanejad played so well together last season was their fluidity with each other. Each of the forwards always knew what space their linemates would be and it freed them up to be creative in the offensive zone.

On the flip side, that line struggled out of the gate this season, so Quinn didn’t hesitate. The Boston University product had Jesper Fast flying around lower in the lineup and threw him alongside Kreider and Zibanejad where he has remained ever since.

Figuring out what works is a streaky business because of the nature of hockey. Players are constantly getting hot or cold and that can impact the rest of the team. As a collective, the Rangers as a team are shooting 6.5 percent, nearly three whole percent less than the league average.

In the interest of not pulling out his own hair, Quinn is going to keep messing with the lines and defensive pairs until he finds something that works. Especially on the back end, it’s going to be a patchwork effort all season.

The choices are less than ideal, go top heavy and have a dead duck third defensive pair or three mediocre pairs. A combination of Brady Skjei, Neal Pionk, Brendan Smith and Kevin Shattenkirk leaves the third pair with a combination of Tony DeAngelo, Frederik Claesson, Marc Staal, and Adam McQuaid.

There are six workable defensemen in there, it’ll be up to Quinn to find the right mix. As for the forwards, the goals will come, the team is creating chances, positive regression will give them a scoring jump in the next few weeks.

The Rangers are a duct tape and dental floss lineup this season. Hopefully, Quinn watched Macguyver growing up and has a plan.