The Rangers resume their season in Newark Tuesday, in second place in the Metro Division, third in the East with a 27-17-5 record, and if you didn’t know any better, you might say that wasn’t bad at all.
But if you’ve paid any attention at all, you know it hasn’t been good, and it surely hasn’t been good enough. And it most certainly is going to have to be better.
The Rangers have been on an upward trend for a while now (8-5-1 in their last 14, after a hideous 3-9-2 skid), though that has mostly been one-step forward, one-step back, most notably the disaster in Ottawa after their first back-to-back wins since before Thanksgiving.
Now that the John Scott All-Star break is over, there’s still a bit to go before the home stretch, but with 33 games left, it gets pretty serious for the Rangers right away. And the trade deadline is now just four weeks away.
Some questions for the final 33:
1) Will the Rangers’ best players be their best players? We all know the names, and how most of them haven’t played at their level for good portions of the first 49 games. Start with Henrik Lundqvist, who played out of this world hockey early, then struggled for a while, then improved. Followed by Rick Nash, Ryan McDonagh, Dan Girardi, Marc Staal, Derek Stepan, Derick Brassard, Mats Zuccarello, Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes … they all need to pick it up, and they all need to do it more consistently the rest of the way. Some of those have already begun to head in the right direction.
2) What will GM Jeff Gorton do with Keith Yandle? It’s a complex issue, for sure. Yandle could fetch a good return from a contender that needs a puck-mover from the back end. But the Rangers except for one brief period in the early 2000s, have never been sellers, and aren’t likely to be sellers this season. Thus they might trade Yandle for a rental or a player who helps them this season. Otherwise – assuming the Rangers believe they can contend, and that Yandle can help them do so — they might just let him walk away for nothing on July, regardless of the bounty they have up last season to get him.
3) What of Dan Boyle and Dylan McIlrath? There’s little argument that McIlrath has done enough to earn the right to play more, or that Boyle hasn’t done enough to earn the right to play as much (and you could substitute Dan Girardi’s name in there for Boyle, though coach Alain Vigneault no doubt hopes, and believes, that Girardi will play better). But can Boyle – now with some rest, and maybe with some breathers – be more of a positive factor in critical games down the stretch and in the playoffs? Here’s another thing to consider. Yandle has played some of his best hockey with McIlrath riding shotgun; and that pairing allows Staal to play with Kevin Klein or Girardi instead of Boyle.
4) Can the Rangers’ special teams figure it out? At 5-on-5 the Rangers have mostly been just fine. But their power play and penalty kill are just brutal. The power play was actually humming along for a period, but before scoring a PP goal (in four attempts) against Buffalo a week ago, they had scored just one, off the rush, in 12 games. The penalty kill just can’t figure it out, giving up not only a lot of goals, but a lot of too-easy goals. The Rangers have killed off five in a row over the last four games, but in the previous 13 games had allowed two PPGs five times, and one four times.
5) Who are the top-six wingers? … and/or is this an area that needs to be shored up by Feb. 29? Coming into the season, the Rangers believed they needed to fill one hole there – the retirement of Martin St. Louis. But they didn’t figure that Kreider and Hayes would regress, and at first, they didn’t believe J.T. Miller could fill one of those slots. Well, Miller can and has. But it’s hard to imagine the offense can have enough success with Jesper Fast playing on one of the top two lines instead of Kreider. To repeat, though, all the top-six forwards must improve going forward.
Photos by Getty Images.
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