New York Rangers: How many riverboat gamblers is too many?

The modern NHL is in the midst of a transition at the defensemen position. It ultimately boils down to how much defense should a player be willing to concede to create offense?

As the NHL grapples with the effects of years of rule changes and tinkering to encourage scoring, it’s led to a massive change of what’s expected from the defensemen position. With the game more about creating scoring chances, the one-dimensional shutdown blueliner is going the way of the dodo. Take the New York Rangers’ Frankenstein monster of a blueline this past season.

New York struggled to do much of anything from the back end. Without defensemen capable of driving offense, it forces the forward group to shoulder too much of the load. With the exception of Tony DeAngelo, who had a breakout season in terms of underlying statistics, none of the ten defensemen the Rangers used last year were effective at driving offense.

Enter Harvard defensemen and Jericho, New York native Adam Fox. Suddenly, the Rangers are 2/3s of a way to a sturdy right side of the depth chart. With the New York giving up assets right now, the assumption is that Fox will jump right to the NHL this fall out of training camp after three years at the NCAA level.

Yet, this does present a conundrum that other teams around the league are dealing with: How many riverboat gamblers make a gambling problem? These more offensively inclined defensemen of the modern NHL do so at the expense of defensive positioning because they’re trying to make a play on offense.

The Norris Trophy argument

This debate actually reared its head in the war of words between Los Angeles Kings’ defenseman Drew Doughty and the San Jose Sharks. As a former Norris Trophy Winner, Doughty gave his thoughts about Brent Burns of San Jose finishing as a finalist for the 2018-2019 season.

"“Giordano has (72 points) and he plays good defense…Burns get beat three times a game, literally, and everybody has him up for the Norris. I just don’t get it.”"

So, even those within the game itself are grappling with what the new age defenseman means for today’s game. Someone like Doughty, who’s more well rounded and takes fewer chances feels that what Burns does undermines and hurts his team’s chances of winning.

Granted, this could very well be a case of sour grapes from Doughty about a rival getting nominated for an award. Yet, the talking point still remains. Even if a defenseman has a high success rate when it comes to taking risks in the offensive zone at the expense of defense, is it worth it?

Sure, Burns finished this year with 83 points, but he did concede ample scoring chances to the opposition. When a player is of Burns’ caliber, a team is willing to live with the risks because of what he can do offensively, which brings us to the Rangers’ issue.

A gambling problem?

Let’s get the blatantly obvious out of the way, neither DeAngelo or Fox is Burns or likely ever will be. Few players can match Burns’ talent with the puck on his stick in the entire league. In fact, part of why DeAngelo took so long to break through was his inability to cover up his defensive mistakes in the offensive end.

This, in turn, puts more pressure on DeAngelo’s partner and forces them to cover up mistakes. In a certain universe, someone like Brendan Smith who’s good at hold his own blue line and a moderately decent skater would fit the bill even if he’s not the player he used to be. That’s if Smith survives the impending offseason, to begin with.

We cannot forget that Kevin Shattenkirk is on the books for two more years as well. The New Rochelle native also falls into this category of defensemen who are better at one end of the ice than the other. The defenseman isn’t exactly setting the world on fire with his defensive zone coverages through two years in New York.

With three of these riverboat gambler defensemen on the roster, the Rangers are going to play a high leverage style of hockey in which it creates lots of offensive scoring chances while conceding equally as many if not more.

Even the mighty Sharks who boast a much better defense, which also includes Erik Karlsson and Marc-Edouard Vlasic, struggle in terms of giving up scoring chances.

So, for the moment while the Rangers as an organization are still in the process of establishing identity and direction, a collection of gamblers is fine. However, when it comes time to start turning potential into results, it could turn into a problem if neither Fox or DeAngelo has an elite offensive jump.