The Rangers continue to make me realize the caliber of goaltending we have.
The Rangers continue to make me sad knowing this is all going to end one day.
When it does end, UH OH!
The Rangers have done a good job the past decade plus relying on their goaltender to lead the way, and lead them to what most consider the promise land, the Stanley Cup playoffs.
From there, the Rangers continued to rely on the goaltender to get them ever so close to the Stanley Cup Finals, leading them there once, and coming just a round short twice (2012, 2015).
The Rangers have made us brutally aware that the coach we have likes to misuse and misdeploy his players to the point where we hate the player. At the same time, we’ve become numb to it and really can’t blame the player for allowing his bonehead coach to misuse him.
Who wouldn’t want to be a top-pairing defenseman when in all honesty you know you are no better than a sixth defenseman. Even better, who wouldn’t want to be a top-pairing defenseman when you realize your time is up but hey, your coach is still playing you like you’re the same defenseman from 2009-2010.
If you think things are going to get better, then this post isn’t for you. This post isn’t for you because you feel nothing that has happened after the first year of the Vigneault regime was a fluke.
If you are like me, dreading for the worst. Let’s continue to think about things, that over time will piss you off.
The Rangers should have never allowed Ulf Samuelsson to leave them to become head coach of the Charlotte Checkers of the AHL. At the same time, the Rangers did what they had to do. Who’s going to be “that guy” and stop a guy from becoming a head coach.
Just let it sink in that the Rangers defensively, were under some very lock and key care, and were treated a lot better under Samuelsson than they were under Jeff Beukeboom and now current defensive coach Lindy Ruff.
Why is that though? Beukeboom was a defenseman in the NHL, so was Ruff. Not every NHL player will turn out to be some magical coach overnight. Ruff has been a coach for decades, and this is still something he’s trying to figure out.
Beukeboom seemed like he didn’t have Alain Vigneault’s trust. While Samuelsson did all he could with the defense, and knew to talk to Vigneault about possibly tweaking things (removing Michael Del Zotto was one of those things), he also knew what worked in a system like Vigneault’s.
He understood the ins and outs of Vigneault’s system and did something weird. Used his defenseman’s strengths.
Anton Stralman saved Marc Staal. Not the other way around, let me be very clear on that. Stralman’s play during the 2013-2014 campaign helped Staal work as a competent defender. Stralman wasn’t re-signed during the offseason, rather than keeping Stralman they went and signed Dan Boyle.
What we saw from Boyle wasn’t something to cheer about, wasn’t something to be crazy about but Samuelsson found ways to make Boyle integrate into this team that benefited his skill set, as best as possible.[/text_output][image type=”circle” float=”none” info=”popover” info_place=”bottom” info_trigger=”hover” src=”1427″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”Girardi in his natural position” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””][text_output]Dan Girardi would have been someone if Samuelsson was still coaching would’ve been either the seventh defenseman or paired as the bottom pair defenseman but playing fewer games to get rest in and most importantly sheltered minutes.
It’s no secret Girardi was breaking down. Girardi was never going to be the same defender he was during the John Tortorella era, one who strived under Tortorella’s collapse system. Vigneault had to know that but chose to ignore it. He chose to ignore it because it he has a habit of putting trust in those that shouldn’t be trusted. Girardi was never going to be the same, those minutes he logged the shots he blocked, he could barely stand right after the seasons ended.
He put Girardi in a position to fail night after night, causing Ryan McDonagh to change his game to ease his partners workload as best as he could.
All of this could have been avoided if Vigneault allowed his defensive coach to truly coach his unit. He seems to trust associate coach Scott Arniel a ton, so why couldn’t he trust Beukeboom?
This year, Vigneault has an odd obsession with Nick Holden. Well, not entirely this year. Started back in the second round of the playoffs, where he decided to bench Brady Skjei for a pairing of Holden and Staal, that turned out to be just awful. While we’re lucky enough to not see the two of them paired together (yet), the fascination that he has with Holden has yet to disappear.
Pairing him with McDonagh, our captain has been seen to make some boneheaded uncharacteristic plays in order to save his partner, which in turn has caused a lot more frustration than happiness from the fanbase.
Holden was considered “safe and dependable” by Vigneault, causing confusion by the fanbase. While he may be a serviceable, he’s not serviceable in the role he’s currently given. Who would be? That’s a fine question. While we have Kevin “work in progress” Shattenkirk who was initially going to see some time with McDonagh, we’ve seen Shattenkirk mainly with either Staal or Skjei to start the season, the duo has seen 49:34 TOI in 5v5 situations, while doing relatively well in the procession battle (52.23%, all info thanks to Natural Stat Trick). The duo was given up on rather early, and most likely has to be due to the fact that when together they gave up roughly 3 high danger goals.
49 minutes is not enough time to fully get the whole picture and understand what they could have done as a defensive pairing. Here we are though wondering the what if. Wondering what we have to do to get Shattenkirk chances to play with a guy like McDonagh.
These defensive woes are going to continue, until either one of two things happen:
- Vigneault gets fired
- Rangers give Vigneault a dependable defensive coach he can trust.
If the last thing happens the deployment issues, the defensive system issues are going to continue. There’s nothing we can do about it until that changes.[/text_output]
Author: Shawn Taggart
Shawn Taggart is a New York Ranger fan, who loves to dive in to the statistical side of hockey.
Besides watching the Rangers, he watches the Yankees, Knicks and Giants and has this strange obession with finding some really good obscure craft beers. Loyal listener of music.