New York Rangers: A severe lack of depth scoring

The New York Rangers live by one rule. Artemi Panarin or Mika Zibanejad have to score or they will lose.  It’s clear that the team is too dependent on the duo and badly needs more depth scoring.

There have been 20 games this season with both Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad in the lineup together.  When either of them score a goal, the New York Rangers record is 8-4-1.  If they are unable to score, the team’s record is 0-5-2.

Even more amazing is that of the 45 goals scored by forwards in those 20 games, Panarin and Zibanejad have scored 24 of them.  That means the other ten  forwards on the team have combined for 21 goals.  That means that 53% of Ranger goals scored by forwards came from the pair.

In total, the team scored 60 goals in those 20 games with the defense accounting for 15 of them. That means that Panarin and Zibanejad scored 40% of all of the goals scored by the New York Rangers in those 20 games.

How does that compare to other NHL teams?

Other teams

There are a few teams in the NHL that get a lot of goals from their top two scoring forwards.  The Boston Bruins combination of David Pastrnak and Brad Marchand have scored 46 of the 99 goals scored by forwards this season, or 46%.

It makes sense that Edmonton makes the cut with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl accounting for 41 of 96 goals scored by forwards, or 43%.

There are two more teams with 40% of their forwards’ goals coming from two players. Ottawa’s Anthony Duclair and J.G. Pageau have scored 34 of the Senators’ 85 goals by forwards. For Buffalo, it’s Jack Eichel and Victor Olofsson who lead the way with 37 of 93 goals.

While the 46% number is pretty high and those two players have helped Boston to one of the best records in the NHL, it is nowhere near the 55% Panarin/Zibanejad number.  When it comes to the Rangers there’s another factor and that is the number of goals they are getting from the defense.

Scoring from the defense

When it comes to goals from defensemen, the New York Rangers are leading the league. They have gotten 26 goals from the defense this season out of 105 total goals or 25%.  The only club that is close  to the Rangers are the Carolina Hurricanes at 24%.

The scoring dominance of Panarin and Zibanejad along with their league leading defense scoring totals means that they are really getting no depth scoring from other forwards.   Here’s a sampling of other NHL teams.

The first column shows the number goals from the top two forwards and what percentage that is of total goals scored by the team.  The second column is the number of goals from other forwards on the team and that percentage of total goals.  The Rangers number is from the 20 games that Panarin and Zibanejad played together.

Team            Goals from Top Pair          Depth goals
Rangers          24 of 60    40%                21 of 60    35%
Boston            46 of 115  40%               53 of 115  46%
Carolina          31 of 105  24%               49 of 105   47%
Edmonton      41 of 106  39%               55 of 106   52%
Buffalo            37 of 106  35%               56 of 106   53%
Washington    36 of 122 30%               68 of 122   56%
Philadelphia    22 of 97   22%                54 of 97     56%
Ottawa             34 of 91   38%                 51 of 91    56%
Pittsburgh      29 of 108  27%              62 of 108    57%
Toronto           32 of 109  29%               63 of 109    58%

As you can see, the Rangers have gotten only 35%of their totals goals from forwards other than Panarin and Zibanejad.  Every other NHL team gets much more balanced scoring from their forwards.