Despite having an 8-3-1 record to start the season, the New York Rangers have not looked good for the majority of this season. Especially over the last five games in which they have been outplayed, outshot, and outworked by teams that are supposed to be worse than them. While they were able to pick up some wins thanks to Igor Shesterkin bailing them out once again, he can’t keep up this kind of play all season long and in their last game, all of these issues came to the forefront.
The Rangers got destroyed by the Buffalo Sabres on home ice with the final score being 6-1. Shesterkin was pulled in the second period after allowing five goals on 12 shots and the entire team looked abysmal from start to finish. This game proved that this team is far from perfect and is still dealing with the same issues that they have had for the past few seasons and in this piece, we are going to go over some of these issues and what they can do to fix them, if at all.
Rangers Defensive Core Is Not Good Enough
One of the biggest issues for the Rangers that became much more apparent in their Eastern Conference Final loss to the Florida Panthers was that their defense was just not good enough to keep up with the top team in the NHL. It seemed as if major changes were going to be made with the big rumor in the offseason being that Jacob Trouba was going to be moved, but he used his trade protection to block a potential trade and now, the Rangers are running back the same defensive core that wasn’t good enough last season, minus Erik Gustafsson, with Zac Jones and Victor Mancini fighting for the sixth defensive spot.
The biggest complaints last season were that the defense was not mobile enough and could not move the puck up the ice efficiently. So far this season, nothing has changed and it could be argued that it has gotten worse.
Adam Fox hasn’t looked like his usual self this season and if he isn’t playing at the top of his game, then the rest of the defense is in serious trouble. Trouba has looked okay but still has his moments where he struggles in his own end. Braden Schneider has looked good in some games and bad in others. The two defensemen that have stood out and not in a good way are K’Andre Miller and Ryan Lindgren. Miller has looked horrible this season and for a player that is looking to get a raise on his next deal, the more he plays like this, the more money he is losing.
Lindgren has been the worst defenseman on the team, and it isn’t close. First, he is still playing through a broken jaw and isn’t 100%. When you add that to all the wear and tear he has dealt with over the years, you get a player who is a shell of what he used to be. He isn’t the same defensive defenseman he was a few seasons ago and he is hurting this team more than he is helping. If the Rangers want to become a legit contender, they need to figure out how to change up their defense because there is a track record of it not being good enough when the games get tougher.
Rangers Lack a Team Identity
Another big concern for this team is their lack of identity. When you look closely at this team, what really is their identity? Is it that they have one of the best goalies in the world that can win them any game almost any night? Maybe, but as we saw against the Sabres, if he has one off night, the entire team collapses so your identity being that you have a good goalie isn’t a recipe for success. The Rangers aren’t a team that can out-hit or play a more physical style because that isn’t their game. They also aren’t defensive stalwarts that can shut down another team. They don’t play fast and they rarely get in on the forecheck and battle so once again, what is the Rangers’ identity?
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The identity they have shown the most over these past few seasons is that they don’t have the heart and the desire to win when the games get tough. In three straight playoffs, they have had series leads and have gone on to lose the series and make the other team look like juggernauts. In the 2022 Eastern Conference Final against the Tampa Bay Lightning, they had a 2-0 series lead and went on to lose four straight to lose the series. Did they learn anything from it? Apparently not, because the next season, they had a 2-0 series lead over the New Jersey Devils and went on to lose the series in Game 7. Did they learn from it? Once again, the answer is no because against the Panthers, they had a 2-1 series lead and went on to lose three straight games and got kicked around in the process.
It seems as if the Rangers have this quitter mentality that when it’s not going their way, they just lay down and take it. This is a major concern because these same players are still here and it seems that nothing has changed so far this season.
Top Players Continuing to Struggle
Another concern has been that some of their top players have not been playing up to the level that they did in the past and it has cost them some of these playoff series. So far this season, there have been two players whose struggles have stood out the most. Those players are the Rangers’ top two centers, Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck. For Zibanejad, this decline started last season and continued into the playoffs. Two of the most egregious things he did last season was go 30 games without a 5-on-5 goal and then, he went the final 10 games of the playoffs without scoring a goal.
This season, this trend has continued and he has struggled so badly that Peter Laviolette had to change the lines just to try and get him going. Laviolette put him with Artemi Panarin and Alexis Lafreniere and so far, Zibanejad has made those players look absolutely terrible next to him. It seems as if Zibanejad is the issue and while fans can speculate as to why he has declined so much, something needs to change because the Rangers have no chance of making a deep run if he continues to play like this.
For Trocheck, his struggles have been less talked about probably because he had such a great season last season. He has only three goals and nine points in 12 games played and while those numbers might not seem too terrible, he just doesn’t look like the same player he was last season. He seems to be playing with less energy and less motivation. He looks disinterested at times and isn’t playing with that in-your-face attitude like he usually does. Something is off with him and it is a bigger problem now because if both he and Zibanejad are struggling at the same time, it puts lots of pressure on the players around them to step up their games. So far, that hasn’t happened. Both of these players have shown that they can be great; they need to get back to playing at a high level if the Rangers want to win a Stanley Cup.
The great goaltending the Rangers have been getting this season has masked most of these issues, but as we saw against the Sabres, if Shesterkin has an off night, the entire team’s game plan goes out the window. These three issues need to be addressed sooner rather than later because if they aren’t, it’s going to be another season that ends in disappointment. Maybe that is what this team needs because if they lose again, this core is getting taken apart and maybe that will finally be the wakeup call for the players who stick around because it seems they haven’t quite gotten the message after three straight playoff embarrassments.
