The playoff push and ice time
By Steve Paulus
New York Rangers coach David Quinn is in full playoff mode and that is going to drastically affect ice time for the near future. The combination of the Rangers’ win and the Bruins’ loss means the Blueshirts are just three points out of the final playoff spot.
You want to take a bite of a reality sandwich? The Bruins have three games in hand and they get to play the Sabres six more times this season. If they take four of six from the Sabres and go one game under .500 the rest of their games they will finish with 65 points. That’s asking them to go 12-11 the rest of the way. The Bruins are 18-10-5. Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yes.
The Rangers will need 28 of a possible 40 points to beat that. That means going 14-6 the rest of the way. Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yes.
What it means is we will see a lot of games like last night when the top two lines get an inordinate amount of ice time compared to the bottom six, especially the third, or “kid line.”
The million dollar question is whether that strategy is the right one for the development of this young team. Should the highly paid veterans get the bulk of the ice time while the future of the team watches?
It’s worth taking a look at how ice time was allotted in last night’s game, a harbinger of things to come. It’s a good sample as special teams time was limited, especially the penalty kill (only one penalty against).
Last night
We’re not even going to get into the power play ice time. Let’s just accept that the top unit will get to play 80% of each power play, no matter if it is working or not. Let’s look at overall and even strength ice time. Here’s how the 12 forwards ranked:
- Mika Zibanejad: 25:22 (15:50 even strength)
- Artemi Panarin: 23:50 (15:26 even strength)
- Ryan Strome: 22:22 (15:09 even strength)
- Chris Kreider: 22:15 (14:08 even strength)
- Pavel Buchnevich: 21:05 (16:32 even strength)
- Kaapo Kakko: 18:29 (16:44 even strength)
- Colin Blackwell 13:44 (11:39 even strength)
- Kevin Rooney : 11:31 (10:31 even strength)
- Filip Chytil: 10:02 (9:43 even strength)
- Phil DiGiuseppe: 9:18 (all even strength)
- Alexis Lafrenière: 8:11 (all even strength)
- Julien Gauthier 7:16 (all even strength)
The difference is dramatic. Chytil, Lafrenière and Gauthier combined barely exceeded Mika Zibanejad’s ice time. The fourth line combined played about nine minutes more than Zibanejad and about 11 minutes more than Panarin.
The question has to be asked, in a game when top lines are not scoring and the scoring opportunities are being generated by the third and fourth lines, should the ice time be more evenly distributed?