New York Rangers: What makes a good hockey team in 2019?
While the New York Rangers have adopted a rebuilding mindset, it is important to keep the end goal in sight: to compete for a Stanley Cup.
Like anything in life, hockey is constantly evolving and changing with the times. Less than five years ago, the dominant roster construction was a team designed around size and defense. The Los Angeles Kings won a pair of Stanley Cups bullying their opponents around the rink. Fast forward five years and the New York Rangers are caught between different schools of hockey.
While the current roster is obviously not a finished product in the sense that it will have more turnover in the near future, there is a conflicting ideology as to what constitutes a quality hockey player. There are old school clangers like Adam McQuaid and Brendan Smith, but there are also Tony DeAngelo and Neal Pionk who couldn’t hip check a child.
The simple fact is that the Rangers don’t have an identity as a team. When New York made the postseason ten years in a row it was through homegrown talent that played at a level greater than the sum of its parts. Even during the 2014-2015 season in which the Rangers won the President’s Trophy, it was not the most talented roster in the league.
Instead, that was a team designed to win through depth and defense. This roster construction still can work, but it requires top-end talent to buoy the top-six. The Tampa Bay Lightning, the team in the driver’s seat for this year’s President’s Trophy, have two of the 10 best players in hockey and an elite defense.
For New York to eventually return to long-term sustainable success, it needs to identify a team philosophy and find the players that fit the mentality.
Is relentlessness an identity in 2019?
From the moment David Quinn was hired to be the 35th head coach in the 92-year history of the Rangers’ franchise, he preached a singular focus on “relentlessness.” At his introductory press conference, the former Boston University head coach said: “if we don’t have the puck, we’re going to be relentless trying to get it back.”
In theory, this is the right mindset to develop a culture of hard work and effort. Up to the all-star break, Quinn garnered the reputation of a fiery and passionate coach that motivates through challenging. Unlike Quinn’s predecessor, Alain Vigneault, who simply expected his players to want to win, the Boston University man lets his players know when things are unacceptable.
The revolving door from the press box to the bench is one of meritocracy and frustration. At some point, Quinn is going to push one too many buttons with the wrong player. The fiery motivator type of coach has a finite shelf life. John Tortorella wore out his welcome with the Rangers in four and a half seasons.
The real issue Quinn will have is getting this mindset and style of play to work within the current contest of the league. The NHL is speed and skill oriented, trying to outwork the opposition as a philosophy may be a pointless endeavor based on where hockey is heading.
The elephant in the room
This is going to be the most blatantly obvious statement someone reads today, but it takes talented players to win in the NHL. Simply put, the Rangers do not have the talent to even be a mediocre team in a league rife with parity. It would not take much for New York to jump back into the postseason conversation, but there is such a dearth of talent it won’t happen.
New York can barely muster up six forwards worthy of playing top-six minutes at a level consistent with that production. The floor for a forward in the top six should be 40 points, the Rangers would be lucky to have more than three players hit that benchmark based on current statistical projections.
In addition to a lack of high-end talent, the Rangers’ front office doled out several bad contracts that will hamstring potential moves in years to come. Both the Brendan Smith and Kevin Shattenkirk deals were given out with the intention that New York would be competing for a Stanley Cup and was only one or two defensemen away.
Instead, the organization is approaching picking in the top ten of the entry draft for the second straight year. Now, to be fair, the front office waived the white flag on this season when it came into the year with the talent it had. But, there’s no excuse for so much of the future to be riding on just the development of prospects.
The years of poor drafting and having no first-round picks ravaged the pipeline and put the team in a position where it needs to wait years for replacements.
Roster composition
The other 30 NHL front offices should all be feverishly following the amateur and professional scouts of the Tampa Bay Lightning. No other organization in the sport has developed a better pipeline of talent from junior to the professional ranks than Tampa Bay. The team’s draft prowess earlier in the decade set it up for long-term and most importantly, sustainable success.
Most notable about Tampa Bay’s strengths is the sheer volume in which players the team drafts make it to the NHL. Whether it be with the Lightning or as a trade chip, the team simply identifies talent in a way that other organizations don’t. All six of the team’s draft picks in the 2011 entry draft reached the NHL level.
The closest the Rangers came to hitting on every single draft pick was way back in 2008 when the team managed to pick five players that would go onto play at the NHL level. Granted, only three of the five (Derek Stepan, Michael Del Zotto and Dale Weise) went on to become NHL regulars. But, the point still remains, the Rangers need to draft better.
Of the Ranger’s 58 draft picks this decade, just six have played more than 50 games at the NHL level. Most appallingly, the team whiffed on both the 2015 and 2016 drafts entirely. Of the 13 picks over those two seasons, just one, Tim Gettinger, has even sniffed the NHL.
The necessary skillset
The Rangers’ front office never adequately replaced future Hall of Famer Jaromir Jagr when the Czech forward left the team for the KHL more than ten years ago. Outside of one season from the injury-prone Marian Gaborik and a 40 goal year from Rick Nash, the team has desperately needed top end 0ffense.
To compete with the league’s best, the Rangers need an elite goal scorer or playmaker. The best way to acquire such a player is through the entry draft because free agency is such a crapshoot.
The team is littered with okay but not great players. On a good team, Jimmy Vesey is a third line tweener that poaches enough goals to have the appearance of a quality player. However, in the Rangers’ empty lineup, he’s expected to do too much and his numbers look poor. This is an unfair miscasting that holds Vesey back in both production and perception.
Winning teams in today’s NHL have a first line that can go toe to toe with the league’s best. The combination of Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider plays well with pretty much anyone. But neither plays at the level of a truly game-breaking player. This is the first year in which Zibanejad looks like he has a chance at it, but his numbers are skewed based on his current situation.
In addition to an elite forward, the team needs to have at least two if not three defensive pairs it can ride with come crunch time. There is not a single defenseman on the Rangers right now that would be capable of playing in high-level situations for 25 minutes a night over the course of a seven-game series.
dark. Next. At what point does a rebuild become a black hole?
A good hockey team needs an identity, a pipeline of talent and high-end roster talent. It may seem simple, but as of the moment, the Rangers don’t check off any of those boxes.