Artemi Panarin is a member of the New York Rangers and maybe that won’t fully sink in until we flock to Madison Square Garden for opening night.
Adding such star power is a game-changer for the New York Rangers and it has placed the rebuild into turbocharge mode. The stakes have now been raised as have expectations among fans who are craving success and championship runs.
That is all well and good and we all dream of Stanley Cup parades down the canyon of heroes. Going out and aggressively signing a player of Panarin’s caliber has certainly put the Rangers one gigantic step closer to being a playoff team once again, and the front office have signed up for seven years of the Russian stud in the hope that the $81,499,999 shelled out will yield one or two championships within that time frame.
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However, what does this mean for head coach David Quinn and how does this affect what will be expected of him in 2019-20? Will Panarin’s arrival dramatically alter the brief handed down by General Manager Jeff Gorton and President John Davidson to Quinn?
There are two sides to this and both have very different answers. Firstly, there is no doubt that hopes are high among Blueshirts fans that a return to the glory days isn’t a million miles away and, also, there is genuine expectation that the Rangers should be firmly back in contention for the playoffs in 2019-20.
Of course, there are some fans out there who are more cautious and appreciate the fact that this rebuild is still going through the motions and hasn’t finished its work just yet. It hasn’t even been a full two years since ‘the letter’ was sent out after all and, as such, there is still another chapter to write before we can consider this roster capable of making some noise in the postseason, let alone being a contender.
But, after a blockbuster summer that saw Panarin, Adam Fox, Jacob Trouba and Kaapo Kakko all welcomed in as Blueshirts to significantly upgrade a youthful-looking roster, expectations are naturally going to bludgeon themselves through the ceiling. That is sports, after all.
Fans are going to expect improvement, they are going to expect to see a more attractive brand of hockey and they are going to expect to see results. Make no doubt about it, there will be people eager to come out and criticise Quinn if the team endures an alarming slump at any point of the season, and those same critics will probably also be quick to twist the knife if the Rangers don’t make the postseason in 2019-20.
However, that is the reality of being a head coach of a professional franchise in a major sports; you are going to have to deal with unfair and unrealistic expectations from fans who are going to blow any move out of proportion and expect the world yesterday. We do live in a ‘what have you done for me lately’ culture, remember.
The good thing for Quinn, though, is that Panarin’s signing likely won’t change what is expected of him this year from Gorton, Davidson and the rest of the Rangers hierarchy. It will be a case of carry on where he left off and continue to make strides in a number of key areas.
For starters, Quinn was hired for his ability to get the best out of young talent and his biggest mandate in 2019-20 will be to continue to squeeze every single bit of potential out of Lias Andersson, Filip Chytil, Brett Howden and Brady Skjei, while being able to nurture and develop rookies in the ilk of Kaapo Kakko, Vitali Kravtsov and Adam Fox who are at the beginning of their respective NHL journeys.
There will also be a mandate to drive and demand high standards from the team’s veterans and core figures, players such as Henrik Lundqvist, Chris Kreider, Jesper Fast, Mika Zibanejad and now of course Jacob Trouba and Artemi Panarin. Quinn thrived last year in this department, becoming loved and respected by fans and the media in equal measure for his tough-love approach, benching players if they failed to perform no matter their reputation, standing within the franchise or whether they were an NHL veteran or a fresh-faced rookie.
That same approach will be needed again in 2019-20 as Quinn will be tasked with dealing with the realities of coaching one of the youngest rosters in the entire NHL, although he will of course have some added star power which will be the big difference between his first and second year behind the bench. He will, however, need to mesh big hitters in Panarin and Trouba with his slew of young prospects together, striking the balance between giving his stars the platform to truly thrive and succeed while still allowing prospects and rookies the chance to grow, learn, make mistakes and then flourish on the big stage.
Quinn’s biggest mandate, as already mentioned, will be the continued development of the Rangers’ plethora of high-end studs in addition to making sure this roster as it is currently constituted continues to improve. Bettering their record of 32-36-14 from last year should be likely given the abundance of firepower now at his disposal, but it will be secondary as long as Quinn continues to get the best out of this group in addition to nurturing the high-end talent at his disposal.
Quinn was hired on his ability to work with prospects and rookies but he’s also seen as the perfect coach to lead this storied franchise out of the rebuild, or ‘build’ as the top brass like to coin it, and back to the glory days. There will be growing pains in 2019-20, even with Panarin on board, and Quinn won’t be expected to guide this team to the playoffs this early in the grand masterplan. That will be a mission for 2020-21.
Instead, 2019-20 is all about continued development and improvement and ensuring that the New York Rangers continue to make steps in the right direction. Rome wasn’t built in a day and David Quinn was hired because he’s seen as the perfect head coach to see this rebuild through for better or for worse, and then to take this team of high-end veterans and young studs to the next level. This year should be considered another small step in the right direction and that mandate won’t change for Quinn, despite having a superstar such as Artemi Panarin on the roster.