New York Rangers: Let’s not kid ourselves, the white flag is up

Following a 7-2 thrashing at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins on January second, it’s pretty clear that the New York Rangers’ 2019 will be similar to 2018.

For as much as every professional sports league in the United States attempts to prevent it from happening, organizations tank every single year. Simply put, with the incentive to lose so straightforward in the form of a better draft pick, it’s a clear choice for a mediocre team. Bottom out and get a better pick, stay competitive and get smoked in a short playoff series.

Now, if the New York Rangers were even a mediocre team there’d be some semblance of an argument to continue rolling with Henrik Lundqvist for 3/4 of the games down the backstretch, but as the Pittsburgh Penguins proved, the team that plays hockey at Madison Square Garden is so far away from mediocrity.

It’s not exactly like these are the Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin Penguins from several years ago that came into the world’s most famous arena and made Lundqvist look like he was out of his depth between the pipes. Pittsburgh sits in third place in the airtight Metropolitan Division but lacks the top to bottom quality of the teams that won two Stanley Cups this decade.

If a slightly above average Penguins team can so easily bully the Rangers around the rink, what does that say about the state of the current roster? For all of the tough talk about being better than expected and false hope through the month of November, the calendar just turned to January and those nine wins in eleven games look to be just smoke and mirrors.

For as great a player as Lundqvist is, even the Rangers’ all-star game representative was brought to heel. The Swede conceded six goals on 18 shots and proved just how bad New York’s defense is as a whole. If Lundqvist is even slightly off, the Rangers have no chance at winning on most nights.

The writing on the wall

The Rangers as an organization made it clear to the rest of the league that it would be mailing it in this year when it issued the letter from the front office in February of 2018. There’s no shame in effectively rebuilding even if it requires the on-ice product taking a step back, but it requires an acknowledgment from all parties

New York is simply an untalented team as a collective of talent. If the collective of Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Kevin Hayes at all deviate from their respective career best season paces, the team’s offense will go dry and leave Lundqvist behind a porous defense.

For as much effort as David Quinn has put into the group he currently has, he’s in a no-win situation and it’s time for the front office to start making its deadline moves. There are too many players on the roster all in need of playing time, some of which who have less than a month left in a Rangers’ sweater and others who will hopefully close out next decade.

The point being, the Rangers’ front office waived the white flag for the 2018-2019 season when it assembled the worst roster in more than 15 years. Things have not looked this bleak on Madison Square Garden ice since the 2003-2004 season in which the team featured over the hill veterans who were playing more on reputation than talent.

Losing by five goals on home ice is unacceptable, pretending that winning is the goal is simply delusional. Lundqvist needs to sit more, the front office needs to start making trades and the young players need more ice time. Winning right now sounds cute and all, but it wasn’t the objective when the roster was assembled, but it was not the goal.

Quinn will do his coach speak about working and practicing hard, but at some point, there needs to be the talent to support the work ethic. Last year’s Rangers had a handful of ugly blowout losses on Garden ice and it prompted the front office to send up a white flag to the rest of the league. Here we are less than 12 months later with said flag still flapping between 7th and 8th avenue.