There is absolutely no scoring coming from anyone on the New York Rangers if they are not on the top line. The dominance even extends to the power play. What the heck is going on?
Everyone who follows the New York Rangers is asking the same question. What is going on with the secondary scoring? The team is getting absolutely no production out of the bottom three lines and when the ZIbanejad line is stopped, the Rangers cannot win.
Is this just a case of extraordinary bad puck luck or is this a flawed team filled with a bunch of warm bodies that cannot put the puck in the net?
The numbers are really awful over the last seven games. Ranger forwards have scored 11 even strength goals in those seven games. The ZIbanejad line scored nine of those goals with Filip Chytil getting the other two. Of the 12 even strength assists, nine were credited to Zibanejad, Zuccarello or Kreider. Now, that is dominance.
That means that at even strength the Rangers have gotten no goals from Hayes, Strome, Fast, Vesey, Howden, Buchnevich, Nieves, McLeod or Namestnikov. The only assists were credited to Vesey, Nieves and Buchnevich. That means at even strength the Rangers got nothing at all from Strome, Fast, Howden, McLeod or Namestnikov.
Is this an aberration or are these nine players incapable of putting the puck in the net? Has there been a radical change in production?
The Zibanejad Line
David Quinn put Zibanejad, Kreider and Zuccarello together in the third period of the 4-2 loss to the Golden Knights on January 8. Although they only played two minutes together, Zibanejad scored with assists to Zuccarello and Kreider. In the ten games since, the lines has scored 13 even strength goals and notched 11 assists.
How was scoring distributed before the KZZ line was put together? Surprisingly, the even strength numbers are pretty much the same.
Ranger scoring in 10 games since the KZZ line: 19 goals 22 assists
Ranger scoring in the 10 games before the KZZ line: 18 goals 25 assists
Can you draw any conclusions from these numbers? If anything, the concentration of talent on the top line has hurt secondary scoring.
Before the line was put together, Jesper Fast scored three goals on ZIbanejad’s wing, none since. In the ten games before the KZZ line was assembled, Chris Kreider scored three even strength goals, mostly on a line with Kevin Hayes and Filip Chytil. In the ten games since, he has four goals.
There’s no doubt that there is still a problem on the third and fourth lines, but in the current configuration, the Rangers are a one line team. The fact that Kevin Hayes missed nine games didn’t help at all. Without their number two center the Rangers’ depth was exposed and he hasn’t gotten back to full speed yet.