Rangers preview: Position by position
The Rangers were the best team in the NHL’s regular season last year and reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final, after going to the Stanley Cup Final the year before.
They have played 12 playoff series in the last four years.
And the core of the team is still very much intact and in its prime.
So expectations for 2015-16 are very high, and the Rangers players and coaches are OK with that.
Here’s why:
FORWARDS:
The Rangers lost Martin St. Louis, who hobbled down the stretch and in the playoffs, but still produced 21 goals and 52 points, which would be career highs for most of the Rangers forwards. In a forced salary-cap dump, they lost Carl Hagelin, perhaps their fastest player, and a unique talent that coach Alain Vigneault called “a weapon.”
The newcomers are Viktor Stalberg, a big, agitating winger who can skate but couldn’t find a spot in Nashville after contributing to a Stanley Cup with Chicago in 2013; and Emerson Etem, who was part of the package that sent Hagelin’s salary to Anaheim. Neither of them is Hagelin. Etem, in fact, though he is fairly big and strong and fast, too, struggled through the preseason and enters the season as an extra forward.
Replacing St. Louis in the top six, at least at the start, is Kevin Hayes, who had so much success as a rookie third-line center last season, but had trouble on the wing in the exhibition games. J.T. Miller played well, but not well enough apparently, to start the season with Derek Stepan and Chris Kreider.
The Rangers’ most dangerous line from last season returns intact, though Mats Zuccarello will have to be watched (with held breath) after that frightening skull/brain injury he suffered in the first round of the playoffs. Rick Nash, Derick Brassard and Zuccarello have a ton of chemistry, Nash coming off that 42-goal season. The other two played together the season before, also, and Brassard has potential to score more goals and points.
The other top line starts with Stepan, who will have to play up to his new contract, but who is as good an all-around player as the Rangers have up front, despite not having good speed. His instincts make up for that, and he excels on special teams, even playing the power-play point. But he must be better on faceoffs, and he’s got to use that very good shot he possesses.
On his wing, as he has been for a lot of his much-interrupted career, is Kreider, who appears ready and motivated to make a giant jump to elite power forward, a completely rare combo of speed/strength/size/shot with a little nasty mixed in.
If Hayes doesn’t last, on the Stepan line, then he centers the third. Otherwise Miller moves down to the third line and rookie Oscar Lindberg moves to the middle, with Stalberg on the other wing. Jesper Fast, the impressive, defense-minded sophomore can play one of those wings, too. But he begins on the fourth line, which added a big piece with the signing of Jarret Stoll, a two-time Stanley Cup champ with Los Angeles who’s strengths are faceoffs – the Rangers’ most glaring weakness – and penalty killing, which is where they will miss Hagelin most.
Dominic Moore, the incumbent fourth-line center (and faceoff/penalty killing specialist), begins on Stoll’s wing, which is the type of situation they had in 2013-14 – the Cup Final year – with Brian Boyle and Moore. Tanner Glass, a regular on that line last season, is an extra forward.
DEFENSEMEN:
The Rangers’ top six is as good defensively, and as deep, as there is in the NHL, led by stalwart shutdown pair Dan Girardi and captain Ryan McDonagh. The latter had a bit of a dip in his consistency in the Presidents’ Trophy season, after looking like a Norris Trophy contender the year before.
Marc Staal and Dan Boyle give the Rangers two completely different looks on the second pair, Boyle a gambling puck-mover, Staal more of a stay-home, first-pass type. Boyle had a rough first year in New York, and goes into the final year of his contract, perhaps the last of his career.
On some nights, depending on the opponents’ forwards, steady defense-minded Kevin Klein could slide up to Staal’s right. Otherwise he plays the safe guy on a pair with gambling Keith Yandle, who’s looking for a big payday next July, and looking to be the player he was in Arizona, not the one who struggled when he got here last March then got hurt (shoulder) early in the first round of the playoffs.
Dylan McIlrath, tough-as-nails and still hopeful of being some facsimile of his mentor, Jeff Beukeboom, finally made it to the NHL. Can he play semi-regularly? Can he be trusted if one of the other six go down for any length of time?
GOALTENDERS:
There is no more certain piece of the Rangers than Henrik Lundqvist, their best and most valuable player, an all-timer who needs one more thing on his resume. Even as he ages, the Rangers know what to expect from their No. 1 goalie, who has been durable, too. The injury vascular he suffered last season was as fluky as it gets, his helmet lifted off his face just as a puck was shot into his neck.
Which brings us to backup Antti Raanta, who ought to be plenty good enough as a backup that plays 20 games or so to keep Lundqvist fresh for another long spring.
But can Raanta, if needed in an emergency, do what traded Cam Talbot did in Lundqvist’s absence? Talbot not only kept them afloat, he motored them through the end of the season and to the Presidents’ Trophy, as valuable a contribution as any player on the roster.
SPECIAL TEAMS:
Can Yandle change the power play that has been mediocre-to-terrible for years? Will associate coach Scott Arniel finally figure a way to get some shots for Nash and Kreider, who have been cast as goalie-screeners while most of the other power-play regulars — Stepan, Brassard, Zuccarello, Yandle — play pass-pass-pass-pass?
The penalty kill will miss Hagelin, for sure, but it ought to be very strong again, especially with Stoll taking faceoffs. Lindberg’s a competent penalty killer, Jesper Fast was fabulous on that unit last year, and their top pair is the dangerous Nash and Stepan.
The newest special team — the 3-on-3 overtime groups — will be as critical as any, with the ability to gain or lose extra points in dozens of games through the course of the season. Logic says the Rangers, with speed and skill and the style of play that should translate in open ice, ought to excel 3-on-3. We’ll see. They didn’t in preseason.
COACHING/FRONT OFFICE:
Vigneault’s got a lot more lineup options this year, and the Rangers — despite their lack of true, legit first-line players — were third in the league in goals scored (while also third in fewest goals allowed) in his speed-game system. That offense was corked, though, in Games 5 and 7, both at home, in the Eastern Conference Final. His team wins, though, with goaltending and defense first, and it is built from the back out, starting in goal.
His first two years might be unprecedented in Rangers history: A Stanley Cup Final and a Presidents’ Trophy and Game 7 of the Final Four
His new boss is new GM Jeff Gorton, who took over for Glen Sather this summer. Gorton was doing a lot of Sather’s work during the latter years of his 15 years in charge, and had a big hand in building the Boston team that ended its 39-year Cup drought in 2011.
He inherits a new drought — 21 years.
PREDICTION: First in the Metropolitan Division.
Twitter:@RangersReport