David Quinn talks about the Qualifier loss & the regular season

New York Rangers coach David Quinn has provided some insight into the team’s season

New York Rangers executives Jeff Gorton and John Davidson provided a look into what they will be doing this summer to take the team to the next level.  Until recently, we haven’t heard from Head Coach David Quinn.  He appeared on MSG Network’s Around the NHL feature and weighed in on a number of topics.

Of course, Quinn was thrilled by the Rangers winning the top pick in the NHL Draft. As with all of the Rangers’ brass, he wouldn’t talk about Alexis Lafreniere, just saying “There’s a lot of great players in this draft…that’s above my pay grade…I don’t make those decisions.”   That’s an easy answer, but Quinn has to provide a lot of input into what the team needs.

He did say acknowledge that the lottery luck helped get over the loss in Toronto. “I’m a lot less pissed than I was last Monday morning…waking up still feeling that deep sting that went on in Toronto.”    He called it a “week of highs and lows, with the disappointing performance in Toronto” followed by the lottery win.

The Qualifier series

When discussing the three game sweep by Carolina, Quinn admitted that they went into the series with high expectations.  “You can’t unsee what you’ve already seen. We have to be careful with evaluating the whole season including what went on in Toronto.” Quinn continued “We can learn some things from  our experience in Toronto.  We don’t want to ignore what happened in the last three months of the season. We felt we were really making great strides, playing the kind of hockey we were going to need to play to have success at the important time of year, that’s playoff hockey. ”

“Nobody’s happy with what happened in Toronto, we certainly have higher expectations for ourselves and our organization.  Hopefully, that learning situation in Toronto will make us a better team and a better organization.”

He didn’t mince words when talking about why the team lost.   “All of the things we were in the last three months of the season we were not in Toronto.  One of the things we were was a great third period team. I think we were the third best third period team in the NHL.  We got blown away in all three third periods against Carolina.

Quinn continued, “We were mentally tough. We weren’t mentally tough in Toronto.  We were resilient, we weren’t resilient in Toronto.”

He did admit that the Rangers are ahead of schedule saying “Maybe we’re a little ahead of the process of rebuilding, we always like to talk about ‘building,’ we’re building a Stanley Cup team here day in day out.”

The players

It’s always interesting to see who Quinn talks about when it comes to the players.  As observers, we are constantly looking for indications that the coach favors certain player or has issues with others.

Quinn did say that going into the season he had no idea what to expect. He said “There was so much uncertainty going into the season.  Who was going to be our second line center?  What was our D-corps  going to look like?  What were the pairing going to be?  What type of season was Chytil going to have…Howden and Kakko?    All these question marks.”

Quinn admitted it took half of the season before the team figured it out. “I think once the calendar turned our guys realized we were a bunch of guys who were pretty good.  I think there was an inner belief that we were a pretty good hockey team. ”

When asked about the players, he singled out the usual suspects.  He started with “Mika, 41 goals, leads the NHL in goals per game.  Strome had a great season.  Panarin had a great season. Chytil has a great season after coming back from Hartford.  Kakko makes some great strides, Howden makes some strides.”

Regarding the defense, he  continued “Lindgren and Fox, nobody counted on them to have the season they had.  I thought Trouba had a good second half.  Marc Staal had a good second half.  So there was a bunch of things…Tony DeAngelo had a great season.  There were a bunch of guys you could point to in the organization that we feel really good about now.”

Should we read anything into the fact that he didn’t mention Pavel Buchnevich or Chris Kreider? Probably not. For some fans, the fact that he singled out Ryan Strome and Marc Staal could be problematic. A new contract for the center is going to be a tough issue for the Blueshirts and Staal has been mentioned as a buyout candidate.

The fact is that with the COVID-19 pandemic, access to the Rangers’ brain trust has been limited to Zoom press calls and radio and television appearances.  It’s good to hear from the coach to get some idea about what he is looking forward to.

Perhaps the most encouraging words from Coach Quinn was on how they are moving forward. “The first day of next season started the day we got on that plane in Toronto. So we’re already back at work. ”