Three Reasons the New York Rangers Lost in Round 1
The season has come to an end in Manhatten. There is now a summer of soul-searching and scouting to do to prepare for the 2023-24 season. There are contract negotiations to be had between some of the players that need new deals and the Rangers front office. That can be done later. For now, there have to be some reviews as to what went wrong for the New York Rangers in their series against the New Jersey Devils.
This does not have to be a look at what needed to happen for the Rangers to win in their series against the New Jersey Devils. It has to be a look at what the Rangers failed to do. Whether that is because of the suppression from New Jersey the Rangers just failed to execute due to a system clash or the players in blue and white were just unable to do what they were doing to find such success at the beginning of the season.
Seven games is more of a sample size than some others will get, but it’s still not enough. As Ranger fans, we want to see the Blueshirts end the regular season and then win 16 more times. In addition to those 16 games, they will lose. No team has ever swept the 4 round format perfectly. It’s way too difficult to do. Case and point, the best regular-season team ever is sitting on a golf course somewhere right now after losing in 7 in the first round.
Anyway, getting back to the Rangers. What went wrong? What caused the Rangers team that was coming into this postseason red hot to go from a 2-0 series lead absolutely smashing the Devils into the ice heading home to getting shut out twice in the series and going home at the end of round one?
Stars failed to show up
After scoring 10 goals in the first two games, the New York Rangers offense decided that it wanted to go on vacation quickly. After game one, the Rangers scored 7 goals, and 5 of those came in Game Six to survive and force game 7. It just was not good enough. Of the 17 goals in this series, Chris Kreider had 6 of them. For a team that added two major wingers at the deadline to only have 11 goals from forwards not named Kreider is unacceptable.
Getting shut out twice in a playoff series is just not okay. For the New York Rangers to not once but twice fail to score on a netminder who 30 months ago was not playing professional hockey is just not okay. That would be unacceptable for any forward core that wields Mika Zibanejad, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Filip Chytil, Alexis Lafreniere, and Kaapo Kakko is just not okay, but that isn’t the worst part.
This was a Rangers forward core on steroids. Patrick Kane and Vladimir Tarasenko were brought in to be major parts of this roster and neither of them were major factors in this series. Tarasenko had three goals, and Kane was a ghost of his former self. He forced his way to New York and showed himself to be a liability toward the end of this series with costly turnovers.
Speaking of players turning into ghosts when the Rangers need them, Artemi Panarin man. He had 2 assists in this series. They both came in game 1. That is the best player on this roster by a country mile. He’s one of the best passers of his generation, he’s got a lethal shot, and he had just 2 assists. He’s got a debilitating cap hit because he is good and the Rangers star just turned did not show up.
Home ice issues
New York won just one game on home ice. Game 6 to stave off elimination. To go 1-2 in front of the best fanbase in this sport is unforgivable. Madison Square Garden is supposed to be a fortress. Teams come into this storied building in awe of the history, the players that have spent time on this surface, and thinking about the past. It’s supposed to be an intimidating building, and the Rangers just did not play like it.
New Jersey had the 2nd best road record in hockey, I get that. Only Boston was stronger away from home and they were the best regular season team ever in terms of wins and points. However, the Bruins lost at home to the Florida Panthers in Game 7 so do not try and tell me regular season stats mean a thing in the postseason because that is not true. New York struggled at home.
When New York beat a team that employed a similar approach to the game to the New Jersey Devils last year in the Carolina Hurricanes, they did so by holding home ice. They won all three games at the Garden and were able to steal game 7 at PNC Arena to move on. They won the first two games of this series at the Prudential Center. They needed to win 2 games at home and they’d move on.
Madison Square Garden needed to be a bunker for this year’s Blueshirts and they were just unable to hold home ice. They knew that when they played their first game back at the Garden, just two wins would see them through to the second round and they were unable to do it. It was not a good enough performance from Gerard Gallant’s men. This team in general was not good enough.
Special teams issues
5-on-5 this wasn’t a good series but it may have been worse when there was someone in the box. New York was not good on special teams and that will quickly sink a team in the postseason. Powerplay and penalty kill needed to be better but in the end, it was not good enough for the Rangers to continue playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs. If the Rangers want to go deep next year, they need to fix this.
A powerplay that clicked at just 17.9% is not good enough. Now, that is largely going to be because the offense decided to go and bask in the sunlight on the beaches and hit the golf courses early, but that is still not acceptable. For a team that had Panarin, Zibanejad, Kreider, Fox, Kane, Tarasenko, Chytil, Lafreniere, and Kakko at its disposal, that is not good enough. Whether that is a player issue or a system, it’s not a good enough situation.
As for the penalty kill, it sat at 83.3% which is a lot better than the powerplay but it was still yielding a goal for every 5 powerplays that were given against the Rangers. It was the fourth best of round one, but it was not that much better than New Jersey’s and it was not a difference-maker in this series. You need to win the special teams battle and New York’s inability to do that was one of the reasons they are sitting at home right now.
Hopefully, this is going to be addressed by the start of next season. If the Rangers are able to fix that for next season’s playoff run, maybe they will find more success. The deadly powerplay last year got them to the Eastern Conference Finals. If they can get back to that place again where the powerplay is feared, they can get back to competing with the best.