Regarding the Rangers, three weeks away from crossing (over into) the Atlantic:
1. Jimmy Vesey’s revival meeting in Saint Paul on Saturday in which the rookie not only scored his first goal in 15 games but played with authority at both ends of the ice was important for the Blueshirts.
Because Alain Vigneault needs to have the confidence to move Vesey off the fourth line and restore Harvard to a top-six role so the coach can move J.T. Miller back onto the Kevin Hayes’ third line and thus restore the top-nine depth that is the club’s signal strength and creates matchup headaches for opposing coaches.
Miller is a legitimate top-six NHLer, there is no doubt that. When he is skating across from Rick Nash, as he has the past two games, their dual straight-line mentality challenges their opponents. They are a very good match and indeed are the team’s two best forwards by a considerable margin. But removing Miller from Hayes (and Michael Grabner) alters the Blueshirts’ chemistry and dilutes the team’s depth.
There is always a time and a place for Jesper Fast, such as the final 10 seconds of Saturday’s 3-2 victory over the Wild in which he went down to block a dangerous shot from Matt Dumba from low in the right circle, but regular top-nine duty alongside Hayes and Grabner doesn’t represent either.
The Rangers do not have a forward who is having anywhere close to an NHL top-50 season. They cannot rely on an elite forward to carry them through a playoff series. As such, the Blueshirts have to rely on their nine-deep depth up front, and they are only a dangerous nine-deep when Vesey plays up and Miller skates with Hayes.
So the remaining 10 games should be devoted to identifying the most effective combinations on the top two lines while leaving the Grabner-Hayes-Miller unit alone. There is no need to fix what isn’t broken.
2. It was better Saturday night, partially because the Wild were sloppy and careless with the puck through the neutral zone, but have you noticed how consistently large the gaps have become in the Rangers’ defensive game and how their defensemen almost always seem to be backing in rather than standing up at the line?
That’s a byproduct of the Rangers’ failure to establish a consistent forecheck and possession game below the hash marks. When the Blueshirts are chasing the puck and/or when it takes forever to clear their own end, they are reduced to chip-and-change that allows easy escape routes for the opposition.
How often lately have you seen five Rangers skating backward through the neutral zone? That’s sure not the way they played through the first two months, when their aggressive attacks on the puck in the neutral zone generated turnovers and odd-man rushes aplenty.
3. I am not sure when sliding in front of the net became good defensive technique, but Nick Holden, who been struggling for almost two months to find the form he displayed the first half the season, now seems to leave his feet as a default mechanism. And there Saturday night was Brendan Smith adopting the same approach, albeit succeeding in knocking the puck off Nino Niederreiter’s stick to foil a two-on-one midway through the second period. This is most likely not the way assistant coach Jeff Beukeboom is drawing it up.
4. Rule One for the Rangers: get the puck to the net. Honestly, they insist on playing tic-tac-toe even when the other side has the middle square and a couple of diagonal corner ones, too.
And at the other end, more awareness, please, both at even-strength and on the dysfunctional penalty kill unit, of weak-side coverage.