New York Rangers: Reading between the lines

David Quinn

It’s clear from watching the David Quinn Q&A that he has doubts about the season re-starting.  He made references such as “hopefully if we do start up again” and spoke about players statistics from this season in the past tense. That is understandable.

Knowing that he wasn’t going to be asked about the future of Henrik Lundqvist or possible buyouts, it was interesting to see which players he focused on when asked more general questions.  There were consistent answers when it came to questions about the “most improved” players and who was the “biggest surprise.”

In watching the interview, it is clear to see who he considers the core of this team.  He repeatedly talked about Filip Chytil, Anthony DeAngelo, Adam Fox, Ryan Strome and Ryan Lindgren.  He extolled the efforts and contributions of Marc Staal and Brendan Smith.  He was complimentary about Jacob Trouba, but only after he spoke about his other five defensemen.

He clearly likes DeAngelo and actually said that he was the one player he would love to see coach the team for a day, just to show him how difficult it is.  His mention of Brendan Lemieux was when asked about the loudest player.  He repeatedly talked about Mika Zibanejad’s five goal game.

You can also tell a lot by who he didn’t talk about.  Kaapo Kakko didn’t get a mention.  Interestingly, he didn’t bring up Brett Howden, perceived as one of Quinn’s favorites.  Pending free agent Jesper Fast’s name never came up and Pavel Buchnevich was missing.

While you wouldn’t expect the organization to include a question about the three-headed goalie monster or Lundqvist’s future, he only mentioned Lundqvist in reference to the game he “stole” early in the season in Carolina.

You can watch the entire 20 minute Q&A below:

Reading between the lines

You be assured that going into these interviews, the questions from fans are vetted and the interviewees have been prepped.  So, knowing that the team selected the questions and this interview was done in the friendliest of surroundings, is there anything we can conclude if we read between the lines?

When it comes to the teams pending RFA’s, the coach clearly values Strome, Lemieux and DeAngelo.   With cap constraints looming, you can be sure that he wants to see that trio in Rangers uniforms moving forward.

He definitely has a tough love relationship with DeAngelo that bodes well for the defenseman’s future with the team.

Of the European players on the team, besides Zibanejad and Panarin, he only brought up Chytil.  With Jesper Fast a pending unrestricted free agent, he didn’t get a mention.  What was interesting was that Kakko and Buchnevich didn’t get much attention.

There were no answers about the goaltending situation, though as he wasn’t asked about the Lundqvist role or Georgiev’s status.

In looking at the hundreds of questions posed by Rangers fans on the Twitter feed, despite that there were numerous questions about Lundqvist, Kakko and even Vitali Kravtsov, they were not included.

And the half dozen fans who asked when he was going to fire Lindy Ruff didn’t get an answer to that question.

John Davidson

Rangers’ President John Davidson had his turn in front of the camera about a week ago and you can see why he runs the team. In his 20 minutes, he focused on scouting and preparing for the upcoming NHL Entry Draft.  His main topic was on how the organization is dealing with the shutdown and he was very vocal as he lauded the efforts of those frontline folks working through the crisis.

He carefully avoided any specifics about personnel except to single out the progress of DeAngelo, Chytil, Lindgren and especially Adam Fox.  If anyone watching was looking for hints about what the team is going to do with their RFA’s or how they are going to handle the goalie situation, there were no answers.

The most revealing answer was that Davidson admitted that even he didn’t expect the return to playoff contention this season.  He also did say that all decisions moving forward are with an eye o the future,especially the draft.

He addressed the K’Andre Miller situation first, emphasizing that the team doesn’t condone such behavior, but had no update on the “investigation” the team was conducting.

The full interview can be seen below:

What to conclude

While all of this social media engagement is wonderful for the fans, it’s important to remember that there won’t be any revelations.  The questions are selected by the Rangers and you can be sure that there is no possiblity that any member of the organization will be placed in an uncomfortable situation.

In other words, these Q&A’s are the direct opposite of the post-game press conferences where questions are posed by reporters without any filter.  You can try to draw conclusions (as we did) based on the answers provided, just don’t expect David Quinn to be asked to answer any of the numerous questions that were posed about Lundqvist, Kakko et al.  If you were curious about Quinn’s favorite restaurant in his hometown of Cranston, Rhode Island  as one fan was, you were able to find out.

There has been no hint of the team conducting  a Q&A with General Manager Jeff Gorton and the reason is pretty obvious and understandable.   He wouldn’t (and couldn’t) talk about the team in his role as the man who manages the roster.  In the meantime, we have to continue to read between the lines and try to figure out for ourselves, where the team is headed.