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Can Rangers rise to the challenge against the NHL’s best Jets?

Vaseline November 12, 2024

TARRYTOWN – One month into the 2024-2025 season, the Rangers find themselves in the somewhat enviable position of correcting mistakes while picking up wins.

They can clearly see what everyone else sees — namely the sloppy, unstructured hockey they’ve been playing in recent weeks — and have been fairly open about those shortcomings. But when it comes to winning, they make no apologies for a 9-3-1 record that gives them the NHL’s fifth-best points percentage.

“It’s definitely preferable,” head coach Peter Laviolette said with a hint of a smile after Monday’s practice at the MSG Training Center.

The latest example, Saturday’s 4-0 win in Detroit, defied all logic.

The Rangers were boat racing for two periods, especially five-on-five, where they struggled to generate any time of possession, made poor puck decisions and surrendered numerous oddball rushes. As a result, they held a 27-11 lead, with a 12-3 margin in high-risk scoring opportunities, according to Natural Stat Trick.

But as has been the case all season, they were saved by excellent goaltending – mostly from Igor Shesterkin; this time from Jonathan Quick – and took enough of their sporadic chances to turn around a game they quite frankly deserved to lose.

“Our record is great,” defenseman Braden Schneider said. “You can’t take that away from us. We’ve done a good job of finding ways to get wins. But at the same time, there are always things you want to tighten up.”

The derailment goes far beyond a bad night in the Motor City.

You can basically split the Rangers’ young season in half. Through six games, they were 5-0-1 with the NHL’s most potent offense. They averaged 5.17 goals per game and 3.95 expected goals per 60 minutes at 5v5 in that period, both of which led the league, and their xGF of 57.21% ranked second behind only Carolina. But those numbers have since plummeted.

The Blueshirts are 4-3 in their last seven, starting with a deflating loss to the defending champion Florida Panthers on Oct. 24, with their goals per game average dropping to 2.57 and their xGF/60 dropping to 2.32. Their xGF of 44.04% ranks 26th in that nearly three-week period, a drop of 24 points from where they started.

In short, the attack that fueled their fast start has dried up, while the defensive issues that were covered up by all the early scoring and strong goal-scoring have been further exposed.

“It’s both ends of the ice,” Schneider said. “We know we can be better defensively. We know we can be cleaner when we come out with pucks. We know we can manage the game a little bit better. We have to make moves.”

These issues are all connected in some way, making it difficult to pinpoint the biggest problem area. But among defenders, Schneider said the conversation has focused on outbreaks.

Their inability to clear pucks and move them into the offensive zone has led to a lopsided possession game. That in turn leads to long shifts being pinned to their own side, increasing the risk of defensive failures while decreasing the time spent generating attack. It’s a cascade effect.

“We can do better by making easier plays,” Schneider said. “Sometimes we have to settle for ugly plays, whether it’s scooping off the glass or just taking a hard edge out of the zone. … We want to come out clean, we want to come out with speed, and we want to make it look nice, and if we do that, it’s great, but I think we’re just getting a little too cute.

The last few practices have focused on forwards supporting defenders and creating passing options that move pucks in the right direction quickly. But there was also an emphasis on making simple plays, which sometimes means dumping it behind the opponent’s defenders and working on forechecking.

That’s another area that has been transient in recent weeks and needs to improve: a forward march pressure, with swarms of Rangers coming down to engage in 50-50 puck battles, forcing turnovers and creating general chaos. Laviolette described it as “putting it in a spot where we can get it back, putting more numbers around it (and) having a little more grunt once we get there,” which he admitted was lacking.

“From a D-man standpoint, when you get pucks behind them and there are those slow rollers along the wall and you have guys coming down your throat hard, it’s hard to get out clean,” Schneider said. “It’s totally hard to get out.”

The disappearing forecheck has neutralized the 1-3-1 trap that proved so effective in Laviolette’s first season at the helm. That clamp system, also known as the left block, is difficult to execute if the pucks don’t get deep enough into the opposing area.

The task will prove especially challenging on Tuesday, when the red-hot Winnipeg Jets come to Madison Square Garden for a puck drop at 7 p.m. They just set an NHL record by winning 14 of their first 15 games while beating all 32 teams in both goals per game (4.47) and goals allowed per game (2.07).

It’s the type of game that should gather strong opinions regardless. Are the Rangers a flawed team benefiting from a favorable schedule? Or can they take a big step toward addressing recent concerns?

“We could have our best game of the year (Tuesday) – there’s still going to be things we can do better, that we can learn, and so we’re going through that process every day,” Laviolette said. “There are always things you need to touch up. Some days there are more. We will continue to work on them. When you play your best game of the year, you take out of it fifteen things that you did great, (but) There are five things you need to do better. We try to keep that number low.”

One thing the Jets need to watch out for is the Rangers’ uncanny ability to draw games they probably shouldn’t win. When it’s close, they tend to find a way.

That may seem like luck to some, but to those on the couch it’s a tangible feeling.

“We are confident that we will never run out of games,” Schneider said. “We have guys who, when we get chances, can suppress them. And we have two guys between the pipes who are great goalkeepers. We always feel that whether we have a bad first period or we are outplayed, in the locker room we can turn things around pretty quickly and bury a few quickly.”

NY Rangers (9-3-1) expected lineup: Game 14 vs. Winnipeg Jets (14-1)

When: Tuesday, November 12 at 7:00 PM

Where: Madison Square Garden

TV/Radio: MSG Network/1050 AM

Forward

Top line ⊳ Artemi Panarin (LW) ⋄ Mika Zibanejad (C) ⋄ Alexis Lafrenière (RW)

Second line ⊳ Chris Kreider (LW) ⋄ Vincent Trocheck (C) ⋄ Reilly Smith (RW)

Third line ⊳ Will Cuylle (LW) ⋄ Filip Chytil (C) ⋄ Kaapo Kakko (RW)

Fourth line ⊳ Adam Edström (LW) ⋄ Sam Carrick (C) ⋄ Jimmy Vesey (RW)

Defenders

Top pair ⊳ Ryan Lindgren (L) ⋄ Adam Fox (R)

Second pair ⊳ K’Andre Miller (L) ⋄ Jacob Trouba (R)

Third pair ⊳ Zac Jones (L) ⋄ Braden Schneider (R)

Goalkeepers

Starter ⊳ Igor Shesterkin

Backup ⊳ Jonathan Snel

Healthy Scratches: F Jonny Brodzinski and D Victor Mancini

Vincent Z. Mercogliano is the New York Rangers beat reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Read more of his work at lohud.com/sports/rangers/ and follow him on Twitter @vzmercogliano.