By Ed McGrogan
Senior Editor, TENNIS.com & TENNIS Magazine
You can dissect and interpret the New York Rangers’ 2015-16 season any way you want, but unlike the four seasons that preceded it, you can’t say that it was a missed opportunity.
You could argue that the 2011-12 semifinal shortcoming against their cross-bridge rivals was one the Rangers let get away. But the sixth-seeded New Jersey Devils, with Zach Parise in his prime and Ilya Kovalchuk shooting like Alex Ovechkin, had more game-breaking talent than the scrappy Rangers, who were probably a year ahead of schedule in reaching the Eastern Conference final. While the Blueshirts won the Atlantic division that year, just seven points separated the top four teams, and they barely escaped both their first and second-round series.
You could argue that the 2012-13 lockout prevented what should have been another deep run after the Rangers announced themselves as a Cup contender. The idle time—and his commitment to the players’ cause—derailed Brad Richards, who looked nothing like the player he was. A proper preseason that could have helped work star acquisition Rick Nash into the Rangers’ system was instead a smattering of games before a truncated season. Henrik Lundqvist single-handedly saved the Rangers from bowing out in round one, but the mightier Boston Bruins overmatched the Rangers thereafter.
You could argue that, with a few luckier bounces and calls of benefit, the Rangers should have won the elusive Stanley Cup in 2013-14. Some may see that year as the Rangers’ great missed chance—they were only three wins away from lifting the chalice on high. But I saw it differently: that the Rangers were fated to reach the Stanley Cup final, and that they were fated to lose it. They looked like an AHL team after four second-round games against the Pittsburgh Penguins (arguably worse than even this years’ group), then flipped the series entirely after the passing of Martin St. Louis’ mother. The galvanized squad won three consecutive games to eliminate Pittsburgh, then dispatched the Montreal Canadiens without much resistance. We all remember what happened, and didn’t happen, against Los Angeles, but I have never faulted the Rangers for losing to such a loaded team, from its goalie on out.
But I can’t say the same about the Rangers’ seven-game loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the following season’s Eastern Conference finals. Despite the well-documented injuries on the defense corps and the freak accident that sidelined Mats Zuccarello the Rangers still managed to take a must-win Game 6 in Tampa, 7-3. That they followed it up with a 2-0 loss at home—the same result as Game 5—remains inexplicable to this day. And with a full, deflating season having passed since, it’s only become more apparent that Rangers’ inability to beat Tampa is the team’s biggest missed opportunity during this entire “window,” whether or not you believe it is firmly closed.
I say this for a few reasons, but one of the biggest is that in 2014-15, the Rangers finally got the player they were dealing for in the 2012 off-season: peak Rick Nash. Nash’s 2014-15 season—42 goals, 27 assists—was the only time we’ve seen him as goal-scoring menace, the power forward the Rangers coveted since the days of Mark Messier. Nash was a threat whenever and wherever he touched the puck that season, shedding the passive play that defined him over his first two years on Broadway overnight.
That is, until the postseason. Aside from a few games, Nash reverted to the player we had come to know and shake our heads at. One of those rare games was the aforementioned Game 6 in Tampa. Nash scored and added three assists, giving the Rangers a chance to improve on their unbeaten record in Game 7’s at home. But if Game 6 was sliced filet from Keens Steakhouse, Games 5 and 7 were moldy bread from a dumpster on 5th Avenue.
Nash is not alone in blame, and is not the only symbol for what might have been. The Rangers’ run to the 2014 Stanley Cup final boosted the values of a number of impending free agents, and it became clear that they wouldn’t be able to re-sign them all. Benoit Pouliot, coming off an inexpensive one-year deal and a career-reviving stint with Zuccarello and Derick Brassard, cashed in with Edmonton. Brian Boyle believed he reached a ceiling with Alain Vigneault’s team and signed with Tampa Bay. But it was the decision to not re-sign Anton Stralman, and instead give that money to 37-year-old Dan Boyle, that proved most costly.
Stralman, of course, signed with the Lightning and was lauded for his play on offense and defense during their run to the 2015 final. He showed this with the Rangers in 2013-14, particularly so in the playoffs. But team management elected to bring in Boyle, a purported power-play savior, instead. It was a disaster from the start. Injured in his first regular-season game with the Rangers, Boyle never ignited the power play and was a near-constant defensive liability. When Stralman celebrated another trip to the Stanley Cup final in a sullen Madison Square Garden, it was impossible to view the move anything but a complete whiff.
I suspect that many of you are wondering why I haven’t critiqued a pair of win-now moves during consecutive trade deadlines that brought Martin St. Louis and Keith Yandle to Broadway. That’s because I don’t think the moves themselves were the problem. Unlike this year’s trade for Eric Staal, St. Louis and Yandle were each acquired with a full year remaining on their contracts. If the Rangers couldn’t win the title during their first, abbreviated years of service, they had another full season with them to take another shot.
Of course, the Rangers were unable to win the Cup in any of the three seasons St. Louis or Yandle were on Broadway. Still, I don’t think for a second that the Rangers beat the Penguins from 3-1 down in 2014 without the inspired play of St. Louis, and the effect it had on his teammates. And if we must talk about 2016, Yandle was the Rangers’ best defenseman and one of the team’s top overall players.
But what about 2015? That’s when it’s time to cast blame. And I put it squarely on St. Louis and Yandle. A full season of St. Louis, even at 39, was a weapon the Rangers had in their holster. But the 2014-15 season was an ignominious end for the future Hall of Famer, and the Rangers paid a dear price. They were counting on St. Louis to be a can’t-miss Top 6 forward; instead, he recorded his lowest point total (52) since his 2001-02 season and was a shell of himself in the playoffs. As for Yandle, who the Rangers had difficulty containing whenever they played Arizona, he was largely a non-factor. Simply put, if the Rangers got what could have been reasonably expected from St. Louis and Yandle in the 2015 playoffs, they very well could have beaten Tampa Bay—and surely shouldn’t have been shut out by them twice at home.
There are other reasons why the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Rangers’ path to the Cup was ended by a skilled but unproven Lightning team. The Rangers’ depth wasn’t as pronounced as it was in 2014, particularly the third and fourth lines; Ben Bishop had their number; and, of course, there were some very serious injuries to deal with. But the Rangers still should have overcome this because of their trump card, Lundqvist.
You could argue that each of the past five seasons—including the smelly, lingering 2015-16 campaign—were missed opportunities because the Rangers had the game’s best goaltender in his prime. In the 2012-13 playoffs Lundqvist posted back-to-back shutouts in must-win games to eliminate the Capitals. A year later he surrendered a combined three goals in Games 5, 6 and 7 in must-win games against the Penguins. A year later, he allowed six goals—total—in a five-game series win over Pittsburgh.
It wasn’t Lundqvist’s fault that the Rangers couldn’t score at home against Tampa Bay in Games 5 and 7. Yes, he probably would have liked the Game 3 overtime goal back, but Lundqvist more than did his job in that series, as he almost always has. For all the mileage this crew has accrued, it could always count on Lundqvist—which is both a blessing and a curse, if all the Rangers are doing is just that.
And that’s perhaps the biggest reason why the Rangers haven’t been able to win the Stanley Cup throughout this five-year stretch. Lundqvist might have been the only reason the Rangers made the playoffs this past year, and it was a season well below his sky-high standards. I will not declare, as some have, that he will never win a Cup with this team—he’s too good of a player to entirely discount it. But it will be much, much harder to accomplish, with so much scar tissue amassed and time having passed after long but ultimately unfulfilling journeys.
It was sad to see the 2015-16 New York Rangers meet their inevitable end, but all I could think about when the final buzzer sounded was the 2014-15 New York Rangers, the champions that never were.
Twitter: @RangersReport.
Photos by Getty Images.
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