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Regarding the Rangers, who are essentially in emergency mode two weeks into the season:
1. It isn’t about the playoffs, right now, and it’s not about the standings, either. It is about development and culture. No one will grow in a wasteland. And something like a 2-9-1 start will turn this season into just that. Issues must be addressed immediately.
2. Mistakes are one thing. Errors, both of omission and commission, are to be expected before they can be corrected. But other than the second game of the season, the Rangers are playing uninspired hockey. That is worrisome.
3. Jesper Fast: Could there be a reason the Swede was selected as the Rangers’ Players’ Player for an unprecedented five consecutive years? And if Fast’s absence has created an unfillable hole in the room, shouldn’t management have recognized his value before allowing him to go scot-free to Carolina as a free agent?
4. But it has to be more than that, correct? This isn’t Mark Messier leaving devastation in his wake upon being shown the door in 1997. But from afar — and substantially more so than any previous year given necessary COVID-related restrictions on access — it does seem as if there is an unhealthy undercurrent running through the environment. Again, if there are issues in the room, they must be tackled immediately, and excised if necessary.
5. Why does this seem like a carryover from the bubble and how much, if any, damage to the group psyche did that three-game sweep inflict on the Rangers?
6. The constant line juggling, it resembles preseason. This young team may have missed the traditional training camp and exhibition games more than most, but this is not a good enough excuse. It isn’t that the Rangers are losing, it’s that they almost never look good.
7. This is a squad without a shred of confidence. But that can happen, and almost invariably does, when a team almost never gets a big save and goals just come out of nowhere. Alex Georgiev needed to make the breakaway save on Tobias Rieder on Tuesday. Two younger guys are driving the bus and they are now doing so in the equivalent of a blizzard.
8. Inferior goaltending leads to making coaches look bad. Sometimes that’s the bottom-line reason they get fired. Example: The Blue Jackets in 2015-16, who were 0-7 with an .836 save pct. (Sergei Bobrovsky played five of them, Curtis McElhinney, two) before Todd Richards was dismissed in favor of John Tortorella. John Davidson was the Columbus president at the time.
9. Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Ryan Strome aren’t in the same time zone where they resided last year in carrying the team’s offense. If they don’t step up, changes around the margins will mean little.
10. Neither for that matter is Tony DeAngelo, who doesn’t seem to have responded as hoped by the staff in the wake of his benching.
11. Pavel Buchnevich, the team’s most engaged and effective forward thus far, must get a spot on the first power-play unit.
12. And with the team’s most important players mere shadows of themselves so far, it would be foolish to scapegoat Jack Johnson. But seriously, why the signing and why the playing time? It can’t be because…Jacques Martin. It seems silly to have both Johnson and Brendan Smith on the roster, in essence blocking Libor Hajek. There are spots open on the taxi squad. There is no reason the Rangers shouldn’t ship the veteran defensemen off the cap.
13. Maybe management was all wrong on Hajek in targeting the nearly 23-year-old defenseman out of Tampa Bay in the Ryan McDonagh deal. Fact is, the only way the Rangers could get Hajek is by adding J.T. Miller to the package. So they did. Three years later, he is not even capable of being the club’s seventh defenseman? Come on.
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