New York Rangers: Five benchmarks for the rest of the season

As the past two weeks have proven, the New York Rangers are a mediocre hockey team that can vary widely in performance from night to night. Here are a few things to watch for over the course of the remainder of the season.

For the longest time, the New York Rangers’ plan was to go as far as Henrik Lundqvist could drag the team in front of him. This is the first time in more than a decade that the team was expected to be bad enough that the Swede couldn’t bring them to the playoffs. There were flashes of a good team in November, but recent games are more accurate of the talent level for New York.

There’s nothing wrong with rebuilding, only the greatest of organizations can manage to construct a perpetual contender. The Detroit Red Wings made the playoffs 25 consecutive seasons through masterful drafting and wizardry on the free agent market. The 2001-2002 iteration of Detroit featured nine current Hall of Famers and likely two more in Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg.

The point is that every organization eventually has to unwind its roster and deal with the effects of father time. For now, the Rangers are in the early stages of finding its footing to eventually be a contender again. There are several pieces currently on the team that make riding out the storm worth it.

Being able to buy in on the ground level for players like Filip Chytil, Tony DeAngelo, Brett Howden and Lias Andersson as they cut their teeth at the NHL level is what being a fan is all about. It’s easy to jump ship when the team misses a playoff for the first time in eight years. But, the real fan will ride out the storm even when there is no land in sight.

While New York’s ship is in the middle of the storm, its man at the wheel, David Quinn, is trying to guide it to safety. Here are a few benchmarks that Quinn can hope for the team to hit in the final 50 games of the season.