Whatever happened on the negative side in Dan Boyle’s two seasons as a Ranger, some of it wasn’t his fault.
I happen to not think he was as bad as many of my media brethren over the two years. I just didn’t.
I actually liked his compete level, and thought – though it didn’t fit the system – he was still gifted at skating pucks up ice, and had a good shot.
That said, he was hardly good enough, especially in a defensive role, where he was often on the wrong side of the puck, and where he turned it over far too often.
But there was another reason his tenure was an epic fail.
That reason is Anton Stralman, as you know. The Rangers didn’t think they wanted him on the books for $4.5 million for five years. And they thought they needed a replacement on the power-play point for the departing Brad Richards. They figured they’d sign Boyle, clearly on the downside, and that the $4.5 million would disappear and come in handy after two years.
The argument that gets ignored, of course, is that if they kept Stralman for $4.5Mx5, they would have a serious cap-space problem going into this summer with all their restricted free agents.
The other side of the coin, of course, is that they’d have a dependable top-four, or top-pair even, right-handed defenseman that they sorely need right now. Also, Boyle might have been the Islanders’ problem, since they traded for his rights before the Rangers signed him as a free agent.
That Boyle wasn’t nearly as good as Stralman is not his fault. That his only effective stretch on the power play came when Alain Vigneault temporarily put him in the “Alex Ovechkin hole” – right-handed shot at the left dot – well, that was surely partly his fault. He never effectively ran the power play from the point for any length of time.
Also what wasn’t Boyle’s fault, but was indeed the fault of the coaching staff, was that at age 39 he played 74 games (10-14-24) while a growing right-handed rookie who needed NHL experience sat in streetclothes. Maybe cutting Boyle’s workload to, say, 60 games, and getting Dylan McIlrath another 14 or so games, would have benefitted both players and the team? I think so.
I thought that Boyle helped drag down his most-regular partner, Marc Staal, and I thought he dragged down Keith Yandle, who was much, much better paired with Kevin Klein and McIlrath.
CLICK HERE TO SEE DAN BOYLE’S GAME-BY-GAME LOG.
Plus Boyle coughed up the puck that resulted in the winning goal in the third period, which was tied 1-1, of Game 3 against Pittsburgh at the Garden. I don’t think the Rangers win that series no matter how Game 3 turned out, but they had just won Game 2, and played well enough to win Game 3, though they still would have needed to score a goal at home … about as likely as Haley’s Comet.
Ultimately, for what would have been the final game of his career – though he hasn’t officially announced his retirement – he was scratched for Game 5. For Raphael Diaz. A righty defenseman who didn’t play an NHL game all season.
Fail.
I wanted to ask Boyle about his terrific career a couple of weeks ago, but he was too busy carrying out his classless, planned, pathetic personal attack on a reporter. So, bye.
Grade: D.
Twitter: @RangersReport.
Photos by Getty Images.
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