State of the New York Rangers rebuild: Report card #3
The New York Rangers season got off to a rough start, but as the season has progressed they seemed to have righted the ship. Now, as the team reaches the 30 percent mark in games played, they reverted to a .500 team in their last six. The Rangers have continued to play good defensive hockey, but have also been forced to do so more than they had earlier in the season. Oddly enough, while the team play has slipped, the Rangers are finding more positive results, the opposite of how the season started.
This is the third in a series of report cards for the New York Rangers. The team is being graded every six games, equal to roughly 10 percent of the shortened season. The team will be judged, not only for their play during this specific six game stretch, but in comparison to the past six game stretches of the season. We will also review the team, year to year, against last season’s statistics through the same timeframe..
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Game to game results, wins, losses and points earned are important to the Rangers in terms of the season standings. The results directly impact the team’s chances to make the playoffs. However, for a team in only its third season of a rebuild, the in-game improvements and the moral victories are far more important to the bigger picture of continued and sustained success in the not so distant future.
The state of the New York Rangers rebuild
In this third stretch of six games we have seen two different New York Rangers teams. Their .500 record is actually quite apropos. The team handily beat the both the Washington Capitals and Boston Bruins. They also hung tough in a two-way sloppy affair with the Philadelphia Flyers for a shootout victory. There were reasons to feel good about the team’s more immediate potential.
But, as with any .500 team, the good was accompanied with some bad. As the absences of players started to mount, they couldn’t muster a goal in a 1-0 loss to the Bruins. They looked lifeless in comparison to a New Jersey Devils team that hadn’t played in the prior two weeks due to COVID protocols. They fell victim to yet another sloppy game with the Flyers while allowing Claude Giroux to record three assists in his return from COVID. This team giveth and taketh away.