Game preview: First game of the season against the Flyers
By Steve Paulus
It took 15 games, but the New York Rangers are finally playing the Philadelphia Flyers for the first time this season. The Flyers are the last of the East Division teams the Rangers have to play and it will be no easy task. They are in third place in the East with 18 points and have games in hand on the Bruins and Islanders ahead of them. They’ve lost only three games in regulation this season and five overall and four of them have been to the Bruins.
It is the first road game for the Rangers since January 28. Home cooking didn’t help much as the Rangers won only two of seven games at the Garden in that stretch.
The Rangers have a mixed report when it comes to injuries. Jacob Trouba has a broken thumb and will miss at least four weeks or longer. Jack Johnson is skating again, but needs to get some practices in before he can play. Coach David Quinn said that he expects Artemi Panarin and K’Andre Miller to be in the lineup tonight.
After practice on Wednesday, Quinn spoke about the teams’ poor showing in the Devils game, noting that it was different from most of their other losses. He said “Effort hasn’t been our problem, competing hasn’t been our problem, and it was last night. and it was an outlier…we’ve got to move past it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Quinn focused once more on the way the Rangers play. He said that the team needs to simplify their offense and if they do that, “puck luck” will follow. He said “Puck luck is a byproduct of keeping it simple and doing those things that allow you to get that ‘lucky’ bounce. We’ve got to incorporate that more into our game. Too often we want to pass the puck into the net.”
He pointed out that the Devils’ second and third goals were the result of the team “throwing the puck” at the net and getting so called lucky bounces. It something the Rangers just do not do. The issue is that Quinn has been saying this for over two years and there has to be a reason that they don’t do it.
There’s a reason that Phil Di Giuseppe and Colin Blackwell are among the team’s leading scorers. They do take shots when they can and pursue the puck into the dirty areas. Why the rest of the team doesn’t do it is a mystery and has to be at least partially a result of coaching.
When asked if he bears responsibility for the loss, Quinn was pretty honest. “As a coach you always feel it’s on you. It’s a sickening, sickening feeling and unless you’ve been coaching it’s hard to explain. When things go well you don’t think you had much to do with it and when things go bad you think you had everything to do with it. That’s how I felt last night personally. …it was such an outlier last night. I know what our record is and nobody’s happy with it.”
Perhaps it has been the short leash that some of the players have had when it comes to Quinn. He said that the team lacks confidence and “swagger,” but a lot of that will come from scoring goals and winning games. If the players, especially the young players are fearful that they will suffer the consequences if they take a risk offensively, it just won’t change.
Look at Kaapo Kakko. Since being promoted to the second line he has been a different player, probably their best forward over the last three games. He’s taking shots, playing physically and holding on to the puck more than he has since joining the team. Sometimes positive reinforcement works.