The New York Rangers had an awful game, losing 4-1 to the Ottawa Senators. They were outscored, outshot, outplayed, outhustled and outhit. After the game, coach David Quinn called out his entire team.
“I was unhappy with everybody. Everybody. The lapses were every single guy in the lineup.” That was Quinn’s opinion about the effort his team showed in Ottawa. While you could exempt Henrik Lundqvist from that group, Quinn is pretty accurate in his assessment of the team’s performance.
However, for one of the first times in his tenure as coach, he called out his veterans. “I just think we’ve got guys that obviously don’t understand how hard it is in this league…and it’s not our young players…I’ll tell you that right now. It’s guys who have been in the league before and, you know, these guys got to step up and deliver in situations like this.”
The question is who was Quinn talking about. On a team as young as the Rangers there are really not that many veterans. Nine players are in their first or second year in the league. So, who were the players that Quinn was criticizing?
It’s a pretty simple answer. Chris Kreider, Pavel Buchnevich and Brady Skjei in particular had bad games. Jesper Fast, Jacob Trouba and Ryan Strome were virtually invisible. Artemi Panarin never stops working, but he wasn’t able to settle down the power play when they needed a crucial goal. Brendan Smith and Greg McKegg actually saw more action that in most games as they, along with Tim Gettinger, were reasonably effective is slowing down the Senators.
Chris Kreider is the first guy to give interviews after games and he can talk about how frustrating it is that the team cannot maintain any consistency. Listen to his quote in the locker room. “There’s that stubbornness, when you shouldn’t be making plays, when you should just be getting pucks behind them and grinding them down, that’s winning hockey. We’ll do it for a game, then we won’t do it for a game.”
If you are going to say it, you need to do it.
Outside of Lundqvist, Kreider has the most seniority on the team. He’s the first player who should step up and lead by example. He certainly didn’t in this game, something Anson Carter raised in the second intermission. If Chris Kreider expects to have a future in New York, he needs to use that big body and brute strength and throw some checks and be the first to begin “grinding them down.”
David Quinn was more disappointed than angry after the game. In his pregame interviews he was optimistic and talked about building on two good games. After, all of that good feeling was gone.
“(It was an) abysmal game in so many ways. Give Ottawa a lot of credit. I thought they played hard, they played smart, they won every footrace, they won every one-on-one battle. At the end of the day, that’s been the trend for us. When we start feeling good about ourselves we don’t do a really good job of handling that.”
“This is as disappointing as it’s been cause I thought we were going in the right direction, building off a couple of really good games for us but we’re back to square one.”
“That’s the bottom line. The good news is fortunately, we’ve responded well to games like this, but they’ve happened too often. So, hopefully we can follow the trend when we don’t play well we come back and put forth a much better effort.”
What to do
As Quinn said, the good news is the team seems to respond well to games like this. If they don’t, there is a problem brewing. When asked what he could do to prevent games like this, he said “We try everything. We try shaking lines up, you try yelling and screaming, you try coddling, I’ve just got to keep trying to find ways to do it.”
Let’s not let the coaching staff off the hook here. David Quinn shakes up his lines less than any coach in the NHL. Even in this game, he didn’t do it. There’s also a matter of preparation. How could they be so unprepared when the game started and how were they so inept at handling the Ottawa pressure when they were on the power play? The Rangers had four opportunities, but were not able to settle down and come up with an offensive scheme that would work. Finally, Quinn needs to recognize when a time out will help. There’s no point in saving a time out if it is never used and there are many times when this young Ranger team would benefit from a stoppage. It rarely happens.
When referee Tim Peel was hit by a puck and injured, the entire penalty killing unit stood around watching him get treated. Was that an opportunity for a little coaching? It took the Senators ten seconds to score once play resumed and yes, Ryan Strome lost that important faceoff in their own zone.
One solution would normally be a call up Hartford. Unfortunately, that isn’t a great option. The Wolf Pack dropped their second straight Friday night, for their first two game losing streak and have been outscored 7-1 in two games. In fact, since Filip Chytil was promoted to the Rangers on October 28, the Wolf Pack have won only three of their last ten games.
Another solution would be name a captain would could take responsibility for firing up this team and leading by example. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that there is a player on this roster who fits the bill.
They go right back to work Saturday night with a tough game in Montreal. How they react will tell us a lot about the character of this team. Unfortunately, the lessons these players learn don’t seem to stick. We shall see.