How the New York Rangers are unprepared for the playoffs

The New York Rangers didn’t plan for the postseason and it could hurt them.

When the 2020 NHL Trade Deadline rolled around, the New York Rangers became Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  The Dr. Jekyll Rangers decided to roll the dice and go for the playoffs.  They signed Chris Kreider to a big multi-year contract.  They didn’t trade Jesper Fast or Greg McKegg, both pending unrestricted free agents.   Dr. Jekyll believed that the Rangers had a shot at the postseason and went for it.

The Mr. Hyde Rangers then went out and traded Brady Skjei, a top pair defenseman, to the Carolina Hurricanes for a first round draft pick.  They did this mostly for salary cap reasons, to free up cap space so they could sign their restricted free agents this summer.   While that makes some sense, it’s the next move that they didn’t make that is puzzling. They didn’t do anything to make up for the loss of Skjei by adding some experience to an already young corps of defensemen.

While the depth of the prospect pool at defense is one of the team’s strengths, at this point, they are all prospects.  The Rangers’ hopes for the future on the blue line are all prospects in the NCAA, Canadian Juniors or in Europe, not in the AHL.  That is an issue they didn’t address.

The Brendan Smith factor

When the Rangers traded Skjei they traded a player who was averaging 20:41 minutes of ice time per game. That was second only to Jacob Trouba, his defense partner who played over 22:30 per game.  While Skjei had moments that drove fans to pull out their hair and the coach to occasionally bench him, he still played well enough to remain in the top pair while chipping in with eight goals and 23 points.

Loathe to break up the successful Adam Fox/Ryan Lindgren tandem and with the Anthony DeAngelo/Marc Staal pairing working well, David Quinn was forced to put Brendan Smith on the top pairing.

That’s Brendan Smith, a player whose primary value to the team was his versatility, his ability to play fourth line forward as well as on the blue line killing penalties.  That’s Brendan Smith, whose plus/minus mark of -12 was third worst on the team.  That’s Brendan Smith who has avoided buy outs and exile to the minor leagues by the skin of his teeth ever since he signed a bloated four-year, $17.4 million contract in 2017.

There’s no breakdown of Smith’s season as a defenseman as opposed to his time at forward, but we did analyze Smith’s impact on Trouba.    One impact was that David Quinn cut back on Trouba’s ice time.  He led the team in even strength ice time during the regular season, averaging about 18:20 per game.  In his nine games without Skjei, Trouba’s average even strength ice time dropped below 18 minutes per game.

In his nine games with Smith as his partner, Trouba led the team in even strength ice time only three times in nine games with Adam Fox usually the team leader.  While the Rangers are lucky that they have as skilled a rookie d-man as Fox ready to step in, they are not paying Jacob Trouba $8 million a year to be a second pair defenseman.