With the benefit of hindsight, 7 things that went wrong for the Rangers

#2 Changing the lines

Going into the series, everyone knew the Rangers’ Achille’s heel was their lack of depth, but everyone also acknowledged that their strength was their two top lines.  Having to defend against the Zibanejad line, followed by the Panarin line, was a task that would be challenge for any NHL team. However, after the injury to Jesper Fast and falling behind early, that strategy was abandoned and Quinn put Zibanejad and Panarin together.

In the three games, Panarin and Zibanejad played 27:25 minutes  together at even strength.  The ZIbanejad-Kreider-Buchnevich line that had thrived together in the regular season played all of 11:03 minutes at even strength.  The new constituted line of Panarin, Ryan Strome and Kaapo Kakko played 10:57 minutes together at even strength.

The question has to be why the coaching staff abandoned a strategy that had been one of the team’s strengths.  While the injury to Jesper Fast upset the line deployment, the fact is the coaching staff paired Panarin and Zibaneajd early in an effort to jump start the Blueshirts’ offense, something they did in the regular season only when the team was trailing late in games and they shortened the bench.   It didn’t work.