Rangers autopsy 2.0

Good isn't good enough this time of year

Sports are inherently unfair, nevermore so as a spectator. We all have our superstitions, traditions and energies to maintain for the duration of a playoff run because it makes us feel like a part of the action. We all know in our heart that if we had the natural ability to play at the highest level, we’d be out there in the mix, throwing our body in the line of fire, trying to will our team along directly.

But, unfortunately, the reality is I’m writing a New York Rangers playoff autopsy for the second straight spring because the gene pool wasn’t conducive with professional hockey. At the outset, the feelings around this elimination are so fundamentally different than any other in my life. This feels like it has to be the end of something. Whether it’s only the end of a chapter or an entire book won’t be known for a while. 

The Rangers had the most successful regular season in the history of the franchise. It swept a playoff opponent for the first time since 2007 and it defeated a division rival who gave New York all it could handle in just six games. Sure, the Florida Panthers represented a stark level up in competition, but everything about the Rangers’ season would lead you to believe they could hang around with Florida.

If the goal was to just hang around and force Florida to work harder for chances and turn it into a showdown of star talent, the Rangers achieved it. The goal differential for the series as a whole was 16-12 over six games and that includes two empty net goals. At five-on-five, it was 11-9 in favor of Florida. On special teams, it was 5-3 in favor of Florida. 

The series was indisputably close on the scoreboard; the margins were razor thin. Under the hood it wasn’t that close, but we’ll get there shortly. In the abstract, it’s hard to feel rage the way one might have after getting eliminated by the upstart New Jersey Devils in 2023 or the Ottawa Senators in 2017. New York was more talented than both of those teams and failed to meet the moment. 

2024–much like 2022, 2015 and 2014–was a case of a good team running into a truly great one. Over the last three seasons, the Panthers have won the President’s Trophy and made it to the Stanley Cup final. There is no shame in losing to someone better than you as long as you gave it everything you had. While there might be individual players who left plays on the table, as a collective, it seems the Rangers were pretty close to their maximum capacity under the conditions of this series. 

This doesn’t feel like last year, where the finger could be pointed at Gerard Gallant’s inability to adjust as a series developed, or Chris Drury prioritizing name brands as opposed to functional talent. This feels more of a fundamental problem, that something in the construction of the roster just doesn’t meet the threshold for success this time of year. Some of that is stylistic, that the Rangers don’t play a style of hockey that’s easy to replicate consistently. There’s an element of confusion in the team’s talent evaluation because they can clearly identify what they need in certain roles but not in others. Most unfortunately, there’s also the simple fact the organization thinks its own in-house guys are better than they are in practice.

That’s probably what’s most concerning exiting a conference final in six games for the second time in three years. Sure, getting to the NHL’s final four alone is an accomplishment, totally true and a sentiment I’ve echoed repeatedly over the two weeks of this series. But, the core isn’t getting any younger and the Rangers aren’t exactly flush with cap space to improve the team.

For the third time in a four-year window, the New York Rangers enter a sliding doors moment. After the 56 game season in 2021, Jeff Gorton, John Davidson and David Quinn all got the hatchet so Chris Drury could serve in the roles of the former two and replace the latter. He opted for grit and intangibles, which bolted onto the second-best goaltending season of the stat-tracking era (post 2008) was good enough to get the Rangers two wins away from the Stanley Cup final. 

I’ve long thought that after losing to Tampa in 6, Drury should have opted for a more tactile approach. Instead, he pushed more chips in, signing Vincent Trocheck to replace Ryan Strome as the team’s second line center. Drury mismanaged his salary cap the entire 2022-2023 season to the point the team couldn’t dress 18 skaters for multiple games, all in the name of acquiring Vladimir Tarasenko and the one-hipped Patrick Kane. 

A Rangers team that showed no real interest in taking the regular season seriously, forming good habits or generally functioning as a unit, lost to a Devils team that over-achieved so hard it got Lindy Ruff a long-term contract less than 7 months before he got fired. Last year was the only of the last three summers that doesn’t qualify as a sliding doors moment. The Rangers were entirely locked into their core and they didn’t have the massive flexibility to improve. 

That’s why last summer’s additions were Blake Wheeler, Erik Gustafsson, Jonathan Quick, Nick Bonino and Tyler Pitlick. The Rangers weren’t exactly buying in the name brand aisle. If anything, Drury’s contention in changing from Gallant to Peter Laviolette was that New York–to borrow an expression from Pete Carroll when he got hired to coach the Patriots in the late 90s–needed someone else to buy the groceries entirely.

Laviolette was undoubtedly the right hire at the right time. I was extremely skeptical about what a hockey-lifer would be able to do with a group that had torpedoed three different coaching staffs with their inability to adapt to playoff hockey.

While there’s basically no DNA left from the Alain Vigneault era, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad might be the two best “we had some good looks, just gotta bury them” players in the history of the sport. 

Under David Quinn in the 2020 bubble, the Rangers scored 4 goals across 3 games. 

With Gallant’s field trip chaperone mentality, all the Rangers had to do was get off the bus and their leadership group would be able to handle whatever adversity came their way. Of course, leadership is valuable, but at some point, someone’s gotta make a play. Sending the right message in the room or to the public through the media is important, but if it’s coming from a player who has as much positive impact on the game as me watching on the couch at home, maybe we need to prioritize being good at hockey before we focus on leadership.

After meeting a real wall and getting an understanding as to what the threshold this time of year is, it’s incumbent upon the organization to understand why exactly they’re struggling to break through this ceiling. 

Defense isn’t modern

The single most glaring issue with the Rangers isn’t up front. As much as you might lament the ineffectiveness of Zibanejad or Kreider in this series, it all starts back in the Rangers’ end around Shesterkin. If the Rangers are going to have to play this much defense against teams with better players, there is simply no margin for error. Sure, the Rangers can win rock fights and keep these games close, but when the other team has an Alex Barkov or Matthew Tkachuk, you sound like Anthony Edwards saying “yeah, they have KD but we have Jaden McDanels,” when you point out that New York has Mika Zibanejad.

If the Rangers’ recipe for success is incumbent upon Adam Fox, Ryan Lindgren, Jacob Trouba, K’Andre Miller, Braden Schneider and whichever sixth defenseman of a given season playing defense more than 50 percent of the time, they are going to lose against great teams. It’s that straight forward. I understand Fox was physically compromised in this series, having re-aggravated a knee injury he suffered in the regular season. At large, the problem today is the same as it was two and seven years ago.

The organization’s inability to consistently evaluate defensemen is holding the team back. Instead of understanding why Jacob Trouba was successful in Winnipeg, Gorton brought him in as a fix-all. He was simply going to be the best defenseman on the team by default and that would solve the team’s issues. 

While Trouba’s demeanor and attitude consistently rub me the wrong way it’s his game that bothers me the most. Last year, after the Rangers’ captain took it upon himself to decapitate Devils forward Timo Meier in Game 7. Ten minutes before the Rangers were eliminated, I wrote: 

It’s great that everyone likes Jacob Trouba, that he’s a swell guy.

He stinks at hockey.

That’s the end of the discussion for me.

Until the team can come to grips with the fact that Trouba is an ineffective hockey player, it cannot make progress. When your second most commonly used defensemen is simultaneously incapable of winning a footrace for a loose puck and then moving it on the occasion he does win it, he’s a liability. It is mind boggling that Trouba played the second most of any defenseman on the team in this series. 

His faux pas and gaffes are too numerous to count. Trouba led the NHL playoffs in penalties taken with 11. The Rangers captain was outright dominated in possession and on the ice for 18 total goals against in all situations over 16 games. 

All Data 5-on-5 via Natural Stat Trick

Trouba is a Quinn era holdover that’s been a mistake since the moment he arrived in New York. His presence alone is an invalidation of all perceived progress as an organization. He is fundamentally flawed in every aspect of the game. He is the highest of high-leverage players where his most impactful plays are big hits. If he doesn’t connect on the check or force a change of possession, it’s a guaranteed 2-on1 for the other team.

The first goal in Game 6 against Florida was a byproduct of two players being put in a position to fail. Since Trouba cannot materially impact the game with quality defensive play via positioning or recovery speed, he has to go for the hit to try and stop the play before it happens.

Trouba, for some reason, pulls up off the puck carrier and opts to check another Florida player who doesn’t have the puck.

Of course, Trouba, realizing the guy he picked didn’t have the puck, adjusted his path to hit the glass and not take a penalty, but in doing so, left Gustafsson back to defend a 2-on-1 by himself.

And, yes, Gustafsson absolutely needs to play the 2-on-1 better than he did. But if Trouba isn't freelancing, it’s a 2-on-2 with a lesser chance of allowing a goal. That’s my gripe: Trouba’s entire schtick as captain is selflessness and risking his body for the betterment of the team, but the forums in which he does that are often for his own glorification.

I mean, he won the farce of a Mark Messier leadership award for being the sixth best defensemen on his own team and throwing violent hits for the spectacle of the game, not for the betterment of the game state.

That’s what so many people miss when they glorify these massive open-ice hits: the inherent point of throwing a hit is to win possession. Throwing a forearm shiver like Rowdy Roddy Piper on Saturday Night’s Main Event isn’t about winning possession, it’s about “sending a message.” As we’ve long since established since the outset of the creation of sports and competition, the objective of participation in the space is to win.

Trouba makes 8 million dollars per year to block shots and kill penalties. He’s got the cushiest gig in the entire world where, because of his style of play and penchant for big hits, he will always be absolved from blame. Hell, last season he threw his helmet in a game where he was the worst player on the ice and actively had people defending him because he met their criteria of what a good leader was. 

Enough about the 8-million-dollar Astrazeneca pitch man. Going down the list, whether you wanna tackle Gustafsson or Lindgren first, neither was put in a position to succeed down the stretch. 

Gustafsson is a fine puck-mover; if he has a competent partner who doesn’t go into business for himself, he’s halfway decent. But, if you’re asking the quintessential modern puck-mover to win battles in the corners or control the net front, you’ve lost the plot.

Lindgren is a bit more frustrating and sentimental evaluation because he genuinely has achieved more than pretty much anyone ever thought he could. He was a solid complimentary piece riding shotgun during Fox’s emergence as one of the best in the world, but the miles caught up quick. Lindgren’s injuries resemble the glass bones and paper skin chocolate salesman from Spongebob. He’s lost burst in his stride and has to use his body to make plays to make up for his lack of raw puck skills or skating ability.

Lindgren, unlike a lot of the other players to come in this autopsy, has contract flexibility. The Rangers can offer him a restricted free agent tender and take him to arbitration. They can trade him to another team who could take the venture into his late 20s and early 30s. While the Rangers as an organization should appreciate Lindgren’s play and his service to the team at a point in time where stability on the left side of the defense was sorely needed, he cannot be a long-term contract candidate under any circumstance.

If the Rangers were to extend Lindgren, it would be a direct repeat of the Marc Staal folly of last decade. Aging left-handed defenseman, lots of miles, lots of fond memories. But chasing memories is how you end up with one of the worst regulars in the entire league as opposed to improving your team. If anything, it’s how you speed up closing a window of contention. Lindgren isn’t on the wrong side of 30 like Staal was, but there is a similar archetype unfolding that the Rangers shouldn’t want any part of.

It’s cold and calculated. The Rangers would likely struggle to find an immediate solution for Lindgren, but if the team is going to take honest steps towards accountability for their roster flaws, it means finding defensemen who can break the puck out cleanly and skate fast enough to win it in the first place. 

There’s an entire summer to lobby for this player or that player. Right now, I feel it's most constructive to address the problems. I’m in no rush to get to free agency and the dead period of the hockey calendar in the slightest. Frankly the average hockey fan with access to Cap Friendly cooks up far more creative transactions than any NHL GM ever could dream of. 

As for the last two, Miller and Schneider, the name of the game is maximizing their respective strengths. While their results together in the regular season were better than Miller’s with Trouba, their skill sets don’t truly mesh. The Rangers need to find more puck-retrieving defensemen to properly compliment their puck movers. 

Fox is expected to retrieve and break out the puck by himself. If Lindgren wins one out of every three loose pucks, he’s alley-ooping the puck out of the zone and laboring to get off as quickly as possible. If Fox is under extreme pressure, he’s not big enough physically to withstand the workload and physical grind of doing both tasks of a defensive pair. He can’t rely on Lindgren to break the puck out, so he’s more inclined to eat punishment because he knows he has to do it himself. 

Miller isn’t a traditional puck mover or puck retriever, he has elements of both to his game. Typically, he’s been stapled to Trouba because the organization (wrongly) views the captain as a defensive defensemen. Trouba has not been a positive defensive player since arriving in New York a half decade ago. Hitting someone and not winning the puck is not playing defense – it is taking yourself out of position and putting your defensive partner in a more difficult situation. 

If the Rangers can accept that Trouba isn’t what he was supposed to be, it would at least accept an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. Again, that’s all I ever want from the people in positions of authority on my favorite team: don’t bullshit me. 

If the Rangers had the conviction to reduce Trouba’s workload, and acknowledge that he’s mostly on the team for non-hockey reasons, it’d be easier to stomach than the current denial of reality. Every single time I hear national media praise Trouba’s game for nothing that has to do with preventing goals from being scored or helping create them for the Rangers, I roll my eyes.

As for the third pair, Schneider was perfectly adequate. In not being Trouba, he earned a promotion to the second defensive pair. Whether or not he ever becomes a shutdown defensive defenseman is unlikely, his defensive impacts don’t profile as particularly special. During the season, I wrote:

There’s a case that Schneider’s improvement in his own end, at least from an underlying perspective, is tied to playing less overall defense and not that his defensive ability itself has vastly improved. The other team still generates more scoring chances and more valuable scoring chances on the ice, but this year, the Rangers are at least getting more offense.

The Rangers third pair left defenseman has often represented what the team felt it needed going into the season. Three years ago, it was Patrik Nemeth who was so ineffective, he was promptly exiled to Arizona and is now no longer in the NHL at all. This was rectified at the 2022 trade deadline with Justin Braun who then retired.

Last year, it was Zac Jones on opening night who was phased out after 16 games to play waiver-claim Ben Harpur, who had some of the worst on-ice impacts of any defenseman in the entire NHL during his tenure as a Ranger. This move was rectified with the 2023 deadline acquisition of Nikko Mikkola, who left as an unrestricted free agent after last season. 

The common DNA Mikkola and Harpur share is of size.

This is the trade-off proposition. GMs often have to pick size or mobility because so few defensemen in today’s game feature both. This is where the traditional hockey men will typically opt for the larger bodied individual under the premise that they’ll hold up better under the duress of a long playoff run. That if they get cycled over and over again, they’ll be able to eventually win a loose puck with effort and size.

Unfortunately, these types also typically lack the requisite puck skills commiserate with successful transition play. The Rangers don’t need six Foxs on the back end to improve their defense, but right now, they don’t have the right mix of traits there, either. 

Whether Trouba or Lindgren return for the 2024-2025 season isn’t the point – this is an organizational issue. While both players have faults in their games, if they’re simply replaced with similar archetype players, gutsy and gritty as opposed to functional and cerebral, the Rangers would effectively be in a holding pattern. 

All of the team’s issues both in style and performance start from an inadequate defensive group. Although all six regulars are NHL-caliber players (yes, even Trouba could be functional in an environment where he’s asked to do less), they do not compliment each other well. If the Rangers would like to be a high-flying, quick-strike transition team that lives on the rush, that means three defensive pairs capable of withstanding a forecheck and also being able to move the puck. 

Striking the right balance between toughness and functionality is an eternal problem in the hockey space. The Rangers have gotten closer to the right combination, opting for Gustafsson in the sixth defenseman spot as opposed to some hulking shot blocker. That said, this group of six defenders clearly isn’t good enough. 

Miller and Schneider will likely improve over time, but can the Rangers afford to wait for their development cycles to peak? How far down the road would it be that Miller ascends the depth chart to ride with Fox, and Schneider blossoms into a shutdown number three defenseman that all Stanley Cup winners feature? 

I’m yet to be convinced Schneider is the player the organization thinks he is, but being that he was one of two relatively solid defensemen in these playoffs, I’m inclined to give him more leeway than I otherwise might have. His puck skills need to improve but he at least skates well enough to make up for his positioning mistakes. 

The Rangers defense has been in need of an overhaul for two seasons now. With Lindgren and Schneider both being restricted free agents this summer and Trouba’s full no-movement clause transitions to a 15 team limited no-trade clause there may never be a more opportune to change things up on the back end. The question, unfortunately, is if the general manager recognizes that his defense is a problem and part of why the Rangers’ offense could not get going against Florida.

Up-front and playoff hockey

It’s truly difficult to pinpoint the Rangers offensive woes simply because of how harshly the defense’s inability to transition to offense limited the team’s possibilities. In the simple calculus of a given game, if you’re playing more defense than offense, the few chances you have on offense become inherently more valuable. Low-event hockey is the Rangers’ team philosophy in the abstract:hang tight at five-on-five, exhibit elite goaltending and deploy league-leading special teams.

If any component of that tripod falters, the Rangers’ path to victory becomes a lot more difficult. Under no circumstances were the Rangers going to win a conference final in which they scored 12 (2024) or 14 (2022) goals. The Edmonton Oilers averaged 3.5 goals per game on their path to the Cup Final. The Florida Panthers averaged 3.23 . This is an offense-first league and trending in that direction more every single year as the median player gets a little bit faster and more skilled.

Sure, there are occasional outlier teams that win with an elite defense and strong goaltending like the 2019 Blues, but that is a hard path to replicate. 

This brings us to the Rangers’ fundamental offensive issue: their style does not translate well to the postseason. New York needs quick zone exits and transitions to offense to put pressure on opposing defense to hunt for cross-seam passes and high-danger looks. When Florida started to clamp down defensively, New York’s only scoring chances came from Florida mistakes, which were few and far between.

New York is never going to be mistaken for the Carolina Hurricanes in terms of volume of scoring chances. That said, to keep the flow of the game close and give their defense a chance, the Rangers are going to need to find ways to sustain offensive pressure more frequently in the future. Since the team was so dependent on rush offense to get scoring chances, when it came time to dump the puck in and go get it on an aggressive forecheck, New York’s stars didn’t have an appetite to grind for offense.

That’s the problem as it’s been the last three years. New York’s best forwards are really good – in the case of Artemi Panarin, elite. The problem with Panarin’s game is its lack of malleability to the playoff conditions. With less room to operate in the offensive zone and defenders less inclined to fall for his bag of tricks, he repeatedly slammed on the breaks at the half wall, settled for a low quality chance and was forced to retreat.

The Rangers’ lack of overall synergy as a team from defense to offense in spite of the fact that they’d won eight of their first ten playoff games is almost remarkable. But at a certain point, there is a height restriction on the ride and Florida was sitting in the first car of the roller coaster while the Rangers couldn’t get past the minimum wage employee to actually get on the ride.

It isn’t news that the Rangers are a poor dump and chase team. Their best players are not grinders nor are they physically imposing. Sure, the third line of Will Cuylle/Alex Wennberg/Kaapo Kakko was getting good underlying expected goal results, but they failed to turn theory into reality. They also didn’t get enough ice time to make a tangible impact (77 minutes across 16 games) and relieve excess pressure on the team’s defenders. 

Now, for everyone’s favorite solution or anti-christ: Matt Rempe. I have no particularly strong feelings one way or another on the 21-year-old rookie. While I understand the fascination from fans, media and the organization alike for the 6'8” Western Canadian, I also fail to see how someone playing less than 6 minutes per game has that much of an impact on the team’s results. While Rempe was a nice story that was easy to root for, the longer his lineup status lingered, the more it felt like a sideshow. 

I think Rempe is uniquely fascinating as a prospect and I would love if he got a real shot to stick at the NHL level. It’s pretty difficult to assess the rookie’s game when he played a grand total of 163 minutes across 28 total games. In addition, it’s also pretty hard for Rempe himself to get a feel for the game he’s trying to play with such infrequent shifts. While the rest of the analytics community might be rolling its collective eyes, I’m at least willing to give him some room to sink or swim. 

That said, he cannot continue to operate in the circus act space the team put him in. There’s only one player in the national hockey league that the coach, teammates and beat writer alike feel a need to go out of their way to say “isn’t a sideshow,” which is certainly raising some questions about whether or not he might be a sideshow. 

Rempe might someday become a decent fourth liner, but Larry Brooks of the New York Post’s proclamation that he can be a “massive disruptor” is utter lunacy. This is a player who’s junior career featured 34 goals across five seasons. The Rangers forecheck issues are real, but Rempe, even if he were an elite forechecker, is just one guy and does not feature other hockey skills to forecast him as anything more than a fourth-liner.

When it comes to the forwards, it’s hard to be as harsh as the defense. This isn’t quite a matter of players underperforming, playing injured or just being wholly ineffective. The issue for the Rangers forwards is a lot more nuanced and difficult to diagnose and why it’s unlikely to get rectified in a single offseason. 

In a vacuum, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafrenière are a really solid 1-5. While Kreider and Zibanejad fully acquiesced to their second-line status this season after years of staving it off, their inability to drive possession and maintain consistent offensive zone time was their ultimate undoing against a Florida team that did not cede many rush opportunities.

A rush opportunity is defined as a scoring chance within 3 seconds of entering the offensive zone. You’ll note the one goal that Kreider and Zibanejad linked up for in the Conference Final was a rush opportunity on the penalty kill where the former was able to use his explosive stride to create separation from the pack and beat Bobrovsky one-on-one.

Kreider and Zibanejad can be pieces on a Stanley Cup-winning hockey team. The duo are amongst the best counting stat forwards in the entire league over the last handful of seasons for a reason. The issue for the two forwards and, by extension, the Rangers is the fact that their inability to put pressure on opposing defenses and opting for quick-strike plays is harder to replicate against well-structured and talented teams.

Against the vast majority of the league, the Kreider/Zibanejad duo is more than capable of taking over and making plays outside of structure. But, against the league’s best, in the conference final round, the facilities simply aren’t there.

Zibanejad: 3 goals, 4 assists in 12 games

Kreider: 3 goals, 4 assists in 12 games

That’s not to say they couldn’t have found a way to help a little more against Florida. Hell, one fortunate bounce, there was probably a Game 7 to be played. 

It’s particularly frustrating because Kreider and Zibanejad are such likable guys. They clearly value what it means to be a Ranger. But, not to be a total emotionless robot, Zibanejad’s extension was never going to have the desired outcome. At the time, I wrote:

From a team building perspective, this Zibanejad deal is the organization’s sliding door decision. Does it trust him to stave off the aging process and carry the team’s power play and first line as a Stanley Cup contender into his early 30s?

The other day, in the aftermath of the Rangers’ elimination, a friend I was having a conversation with compared it to getting married to the first person you ever dated in college. Sure, you love this person and you’ve had some great life experiences together at the most key points of your social development, but you still have a lot of growing to do as a person before you’d classify yourself as a finished product.

A quick history lesson. 

The last 15 Stanley Cup Champion first line centers were: Jack Eichel, Nathan MacKinnon, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point, Ryan O’Reilly, Nick Backstrom, Sidney Crosby, Sidney Crosby, Jonathan Toews, Anze Kopitar, Jonathan Toews, Anze Kopitar, Patrice Bergeron and Jonathan Toews. Oh, and just for emphasis, the 16th was Sidney Crosby, again. 

It’s not a knock on Zibanejad to say he’s not that caliber of player. Sure, he puts up better counting stats than O’Reilly, but he’s not half the defender the Canadian is. Could Zibanejad put up numbers similar to Backstrom if he played his entire career with peak Alex Ovechkin? Maybe.

It’s rough bagging on talented players who’ve got clear sentimental pull. Kreider’s maturation from frustrating and young to the team’s elder statesman and the public opinion for who the captain should be is what every team hopes a first-round draft pick can eventually become. 

I am under no illusion that the Rangers think Kreider and Zibanejad are part of the problem. Frankly, I don’t think they’re entirely in the cons column of a hypothetical pros and cons list of the 2023-2024 roster. However, the duo’s inability to find any meaningful success with over 20 different forwards since the regrettable trade of Pavel Buchnveich does give the message that they might be difficult to play with. Staking a championship window on the duo would make the path to winning more difficult.

With Zibanejad in the team’s long-term plans holding a full no-movement clause until 2030 and Kreider under contract for two more seasons, I’d imagine the single biggest goal of the offseason is finding someone to help matriculate some of their counting stat success into more tangible zone time for the purposes of sustainable chance creation. 

Without more zone time and consistent chance creation at 5-on-5 Zibanejad and Kreider won’t be able to impact the game enough to justify their existing roles if the Rangers would like to win a Stanley Cup.

Coaching and decision-making

For much of the 2023-2024 season, Laviolette was a breath of fresh air. His insistence on maintaining lineup continuity, which was a player-driven request, was sorely needed after years in the Gallant line blender. While his deference to a veteran like Blake Wheeler as a first-line right wing for stretches of the regular season was frustrating, it wasn’t as much of a struggle as in year’s past. 

While the Rangers didn’t ultimately bring a Cup back down the Canyon of Heroes for the first time in 30 years, I have a hard time calling this season a failure or disappointment. Coming up this short definitely hurts and poses difficult questions, but Laviolette’s first year bump was very real and his efforts must be recognized. Historically, Laviolette’s team have dipped in year two after a strong first season, so the Rangers need to be aware of not allowing bad habits to creep in.

I don’t have many complaints about Laviolette in the regular season. The team lacked preparation and an attention to detail the last two seasons. They needed an adult in the room to make them practice hard and foster good habits. They needed someone to make them operate as a team and not a collective of individuals with a common goal. 

The hugs at the end of practice, keeping injured players around the team, incorporating player’s families as much as possible to break up the monotony of a long season –all of those tools worked. Laviolette pushed the right buttons and got incredible results. The team had its best season in 98 years of existence under his stewardship. 

However, when push came to shove and Laviolette could’ve made a difference in the playoffs, he faltered. I won’t put the blame squarely on him for allowing Trouba to self-immolate at every turn, I struggle to imagine Trouba would’ve willingly taken a healthy scratch without stirring up all kinds of hell. 

Where Laviolette could’ve made a difference was in the margins of the lineup. The Rangers’ inability to breakout of their own zone was the team’s Achilles heel and sitting in the press box wearing a nicely tailored suit was defenseman Zac Jones. The former NCAA national champion doesn’t have a litany of experience and is on the smaller side, but if he was brought on the trip as the seventh defenseman, the team needed to feel okay if he played. 

The series against Florida was ripe for Jones to inject some life into a laboring blue line. It’s hard not to look at the success the Edmonton Oilers had inserting Phillip Broberg, who has a similar skill set to Jones and not at least wonder what could’ve been. 

On top of not utilizing Jones, I wasn’t the only one unhappy with Laviolette’s deployment of Rempe. Simply put, if he’s not a sideshow that means he’s a hockey player. And last time I checked, hockey players play hockey. If he’s in the lineup, he needs more than 7 shifts across the first two periods. If he’s not worthy of trust for more than that, Rempe is taking away ice time from someone else who might have been able to make more of an impact.

That’s the frustrating component of these lineup decisions, there’s nothing worse in all of sports than “what could've been.” After all, the Rangers only needed one goal in several of these games. Maybe one less failed exit because Jones is in the lineup generates the rush chance Kreider and Zibanjead needed to make an impact. 

Lastly, and this is more of a nitpick, Laviolette’s lineup usage down the stretch of all these one-goal games was wholly unsatisfying. Rolling all four lines evenly in the third period of an elimination game after riding your top six to the brink of exhaustion the previous five games doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. In addition, wasting offensive zone starts on the fourth line while down a goal is just misguided. If they aren’t capable of getting out of their own zone in a one-goal game, they probably shouldn’t be on the ice at that juncture. 

Again, I felt Laviolette’s regular season was the best by a Rangers head coach in at least nine years. His playoffs weren’t perfect but to think the slightest of changes would have led to one more goal and at least extended the series is unsatisfying.

Reassess or reload?

After coming up short in the Conference Final round for the second time in three years, there are two schools of thought. The national media, for whatever reason, is insisting that the Rangers stay the course, that if they’re this close, all they need to do is tweak around the edges and hope players already in house can improve. Listening to 32 Thoughts on Monday was an exercise in suspension of disbelief. You could’ve told me Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek didn’t watch a single second of any game and only read the box scores to come to their conclusions and I’d believe you. 

While the difference in the series was only a handful of goals spread across several games, the Rangers’ path to victory was about as difficult as humanly possible. Expecting Shesterkin to play .930 goalie and win every game 2-1 was not going to work against a team with actual killers. That’s the issue at hand here: the Rangers want to play low-event hockey where their high-end talent can swing a handful of plays in the team’s favor. 

But, when Zibanejad has to look down the barrel at Barkov, he’s getting stuffed in a locker every time. Expecting Zibanejad to improve to that level of player at this stage of his career isn’t wishful thinking, it’s outright delusional. Players don’t ascend in their mid-30s to elite status. 

The premise that the Rangers just need a few guys to play better and they could’ve beaten Florida is true. The goal differential for the series was only four, and two of those four were empty-netters. That’s not insurmountable, but career years from Trocheck, Lafrenière and Panarin were the driving force of the team’s success. I don’t think it’s particularly feasible for the Rangers to expect career years from several key contributors and then say “we need you guys to play better,” too. 

This is who Kreider and Zibanejad are at this point. Much of my analysis about the Rangers over the last two years stems from their roster inflexibility and lack of cap space. They were never going to be able to fundamentally shake up their roster and give the team a new look, so it was always going to be incumbent upon the team’s heavy-hitters to find a different gear if the team was ever going to take the final step. 

With two Conference Final performances that left something to be desired from the Rangers’ top players (Trocheck and Lafrenière excluded), I don’t think running it back is a viable option in the court of public opinion. I’m not ready to stake the last year of cost-controlled Igor Shesterkin on Brennan Othman and the bargain bin of free agency being the magic formula to unlock a higher plane of existence for Rangers hockey.

There are no easy solutions to the Rangers’ roster issues. 

In practice they likely need three new defensemen to compliment Fox, Schneider and Miller. In reality they’re only likely to replace Gustafsson with Jones. 

The Rangers are consistently chasing intrinsic value, intangibles and traits that can’t be measured because measurable traits are expensive. Goals and assists cost a lot more than leadership and experience. While I disagree with the organization’s prioritization of these traits, I can at least understand what they are attempting to do. Without the ability to radically remake the roster, the best case is hoping that something intangible can translate over to better on-ice results. 

In lieu of meaningful change, I struggle to view the short-term future with optimism. It really does feel like the 2023-2024 season was their best shot at making something magical happen. 

Now, if anything, the conversation shifting towards next season brings one important question to the forefront: is Drury actually trying to win a Stanley Cup or is he just trying to keep a competitive team consistently in the playoffs? 

I’ve long assumed he’s particularly beholden to owner James Dolan’s whims in a way that Glen Sather or Jeff Gorton never were because of the nature in which he came to assume the dual role of president and GM. There was a small part of my brain during the trade deadline window that felt that Drury might be trying to have his cake and eat it too by not going all the way in on a group he knew was faulty. That’s a cynical view of team-building and an executive’s decision-making, but it’s also foolish to assume there isn’t a glimmer of self-preservation that goes into these decisions.

It definitely felt like Drury’s reluctance to part with Othman or Perrault could be tied to knowing his group was unlikely to break all the way through. Those two forwards represent a lifeline to a more gradual decline from contender status than what happened last decade. Instead of running Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello, J.T Miller, Ryan McDonagh and Kevin Hayes until the window was very clearly going to close, Drury is hopeful that he can seamlessly maintain competitiveness.

My counterpoint is very straightforward: why should I believe that the team whose last two first-round picks to record 70 points in a season (Kreider 2009 and Brian Leetch 1986) suddenly understand the keys to player development while trying to maintain Stanley Cup contender status. 

Two whole players in a 23-year window.

Perrault very much looks like he could be a high-end NHL player. The cost assessment at the deadline was simple: what’s more valuable –20-ish games of Jake Guentzel or Perrault potentially becoming a top six winger 3 years or so from now? The Rangers three years from now are going to look vastly different from the group that just bowed out in six against the Panthers.

Shesterkin is due for a long-term extension that will likely reset the goaltending market. If you wanna argue that locking up a goalie at a top-of-the-market price is a bad plan for roster construction, I wouldn’t disagree. That said, without Shesterkin, the Rangers are a middling hockey team with no prospects for postseason success. They’ve made their path and have no choice but to forge ahead as a goalie dependent team. 

In addition to Shesterkin needing a new deal, by the start of the 2026-2027 season, Panarin, Kreider and Trouba will all be unrestricted free agents. Lafreniere, Schneider and Miller will all be or have been taken care of as restricted free agents. 

Does a core of Zibanejad and Trocheck in their mid-30s alongside Perrault, Lafreniere, Othman, Fox, Miller, Schneider and Shesterkin sound particularly competitive? No, it doesn’t.

That’s why I felt it so crucial at the time for Drury to stake more on this particular iteration of the Rangers. Instead, he opted to double down on his guys and support them with ancillary pieces instead of players capable of making a more direct individual impact. And please spare me the “he learned from 2022-2023.” 

On no planet was adding Jake Guentzel or Buchnevich to the Rangers the same as adding one-hipped Kane or an old Tarasenko. Drury foolishly believed he was getting vintage that’d been stored properly and ended up with rotted-out, hole-ridden clothes. Adding Kane and Tarasenko to a flawed 5-on-5 team was an act of sheer hubris that he paid for in getting embarrassed against the Devils. 

All of that said, the Rangers are facing a summer of extreme uncertainty. Marrying Zibanejad was Drury’s single-most impactful roster decision. This upcoming summer, we’ll get a clear understanding as to whether or not Drury realizes his team isn’t good enough. If he stakes his job on a group that’s repeatedly failed to beat elite competition on the premise that they only need to be a little bit better, his hubris will be his own undoing. 

How Drury handles Lindgren and Kakko as RFAs and Trouba’s newly found limited no-movement clause will tell us exactly what he thinks. If he forges on with the same core 14 skaters and tinkers the bottom four spots, the Rangers are very likely going to end up in a similar position this time next June but with a core another year older. 

Weirder things have happened. After all, it was the Washington Capitals team after winning two straight President’s trophies that broke through and took home the Cup. The Blues team the year after wasn’t particularly talented or imposing – it just got hot at the right time and took advantage of the situation before it. 

Staking your career and the direction of a franchise on outlier solutions is a risky proposition, but one Drury and his predecessors are well familiar with. When you have the gift of a franchise goaltender, you’re stubborn to a fault about how good your team actually is. It’s hard to evaluate everything else when you have such a strong difference-maker in the regular season. 

If you can win 55 regular season games out of 82, why can’t you win 16 out of 28? That’s what elite goaltending teams face as their dilemma. I just can’t understand why after 15 years of Henrik Lundqvist, Drury would repeat the same mistake but with a better supporting cast. The 2023-2024 Rangers were the best iteration of the franchise post-1994. Period. 

Lundqvist never played with anyone as talented as Fox or Panarin aside from his rookie season with Jaromir Jagr. Lundqvist himself on one of the MSG pregame shows said, “I wish I was on a team this good.” You’d think the living, breathing well-tailored-suit-wearing Hall of Famer would serve as a warning about relying too much on one player to make something happen. 

This is the last real chance for Drury to recognize the limitations of his group before it might be too late. The clock is ticking on aging players who may or may not begin to decline. Ultimately, the 2023-2024 Rangers are a tale of what could’ve been when they could’ve been a team for the ages.