Rangers Must Go for Cup or Rebuild Roster

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Tonight, the Rangers head out to Long Island to do battle with the Islanders, in a game that can fairly be described as must-win. The Rangers have lost five games in a row, and not only do they no longer look like Cup contenders, but their place in the playoffs is beginning to seem tenuous at best.

In goal, Henrik Lundqvist has seldom resembled the world beater he was for the Rangers (and the Swedish Olympic team) last season. On the blue line, while Marek Malik and Michal Rozsival were tremendous last season, they have at times struggled badly this season. And Fedor Tyutin has taken a big step backward as well; not only has he failed to establish himself as a viable option on the point of the power play, but Tyutin’s positional play in the defensive zone has also been sporadic.

Up front, the returning trio of Jaromir Jagr, Michael Nylander, and Martin Straka has been quite good, as has first-year Ranger Brendan Shanahan. But the rest of the forward corps has been interchangeable — and not in a good way. For while Marcel Hossa, Ryan Hollweg, Blair Betts, Jason Ward, and the rest of the Rangers’ litany of second-tier forwards have made an admirable effort, they are incapable of taking any pressure off the “Four Horsemen,” who are being ridden into the ground to the tune of 20+ minutes per night.

To put this point into proper context, Jagr, Straka, Nylander, and Shanahan — all in their mid-to-late 30s — are among the NHL’s leaders in ice time per game for forwards. A look at the rest of the NHL’s top 25 in this category shows only Rod Brind’Amour (36) and Vyacheslav Kozlov (34) are similarly aged; needless to say, this trend does not bode well for the second half of the season.

To make matters worse, the Rangers’ most expensive off-season acquisitions — Matt Cullen and Aaron Ward — have proved to be far less capable in Broadway Blueshirts than they were in Hurricanes sweaters. Fellow free-agent signee Karel Rachunek has also been a huge disappointment: He is a teamworst minus-12 and rarely demonstrates that he deserves a regular spot in the NHL, much less on a team with Cup aspirations. The Rangers are paying a combined $7.5 million to that trio, and it’s now painfully obvious they could have done far better last summer.

For one obvious example, consider Chris Pronger ($6.25 million), who was available in trade. The Rangers surely could have put together a package comparable to the one that allowed the Anaheim Ducks to snag the perennial Norris Trophy candidate (in exchange for Joffrey Lupul, Ladislav Smid, and three draft picks). And if giving up a package of youngsters to land Pronger was an unsavory option for Rangers general manager Glen Sather and head coach Tom Renney, a more aggressive pursuit of Ed Jovanovski ($7 million), or Zdeno Chara ($7.5 million) would also have served the Rangers well.

All three are big hitters with fearsome shots from the point — something the Blueshirts desperately lack — and are capable of playing close to 30 minutes per night of All-Star caliber defense. It’s fine to pursue the Cup with a no-name defense — the Hurricanes did just fine in that regard — but “noname” doesn’t mean invisible when opposing forwards are crashing the crease. And on far too many occasions this season, invisible is exactly what the Rangers’ defense has been.

There’s no easy answer to the Blueshirts’ sudden woes. They’re certainly not going to trade Jagr and Nylander for a slew of talented forward prospects. And they’re not going to land Jovanovski in a trade, since he has indicated he has no interest in abandoning Phoenix’s mild winters by waiving his no-trade clause.

Instead, the Rangers need to look from within while trying to pursue deals for some of the second-tier players expected to become available as the trade deadline approaches. And the first place to start would be to give Thomas Pöck an opportunity to assert himself on the power play.

Last season, Pöck tallied 61 points in 67 games with Hartford (including nine power play goals).Yet on the rare occasions he’s been given the opportunity to suit up for the Rangers, Pöck sees little or no ice time with the man advantage. In Saturday night’s atrocious loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning — during which the Blueshirts blew a 3–0 third period lead to fall by a 4–3 final score — Pöck received an incomprehensible 15 seconds of power play ice time. Meanwhile, Rachunek was given 2:48, the most among Rangers’ blueliners. Flip-flopping their ice time could only yield a positive result.

In the next two months, names like Eric Brewer, Keith Tkachuk, Shane Doan, Derek Morris, and even Brian Leetch will be bandied about as possible solutions for the Rangers. But what the Rangers really must do is decide whether they’re competing for the Cup or rebuilding. If it’s the former, they should throw caution to the wind and do whatever is necessary to right their wayward ship. But if it’s the latter, their future would be much better served by giving youngsters like Pöck an opportunity to cut their teeth, suffering the inevitable mistakes along the road to what will hopefully yield perennial success.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor in chief of InsideHockey.com.


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