http://trackingthenyrangers.blogspot.com -- Your scoring chance claim is BS, the Rangers have been outchanced at even-strength.
Well, for one, "chances" are so incredibly biased, I won't go into what constitutes one or not. I never made a claim we outchance the opposition. I say the style we employ makes the chances we
do get "high quality". It's why we play well against teams that employ the cycle, like Vancouver. They can throw all the point shots they like, but when their point man fumbles the puck, we get a 2 on 1. "Outchanced"? Sure, according to the stats. We'll still win the game.
The difference for the Rangers is that when the effort isn't there, we don't force those turnovers and don't create those scoring chances. And we, obviously, lose. However, unlike other teams, when we have a stinker we register sub-20 shots. Let the other team take shots for a minute, go dump the puck and go for a change. When the effort isn't there, that's what a crappy Rangers game looks like. When we aggressively forecheck and pressure the shooters, they cough up the puck and we get an odd man rush every minute and we put on our "normal" amount of shots.
The Rangers were 19th in the NHL in both SF/60 and SA/60 last season. So, yeah, they might improve from their current rankings in those categories but not enough to make up for the negative regression sure to affect their ridiculously high league-leading even-strength PDO.
This you're just pulling out of your ass
The truth is neither you nor I will know where they will end up in the end. These stats are interconnected. Letting a few more shots get by boosts Lundqvist's save % stat, sure. We will likely let a few less get by later in the year and it'll decline, but his GAA is right where it was last year.
Shot percentage and how many shots you take is also connected. Gaborik this year has an atrocious shooting percentage - however he's also throwing more shots on net than he has ever done in his career. Even the ones that aren't high quality, he just puts it on net. This boosts his shot/game stat, while lowering his shot %.
The entire point of advanced stats is the fact that there does exist a wide discrepancy in shot differential among teams at the end of every season but the difference in even-strength SH%, as well as the difference in PDO (even-strength SH% + even-strength SV%) is very small and the discrepancy that does exist can be attributed almost entirely to luck.
The last two years we've about the same amount of shots on net than we allowed to get to us. Last year was +.5. The year before that was -.3 (the year we didn't make the playoffs and our team was all Gaborik).
This year we're at -6. If you think we'll stay there, that's on you. We're icing essentially the same team, just with the emergence of two defensemen who can carry the puck, the blossoming of Stepan (who has looked nothing short of incredible) and the adding of Richards, who will not likely change much even strength, but has already added so much to our PP. Despite it being worse statistically than last year, the change is night and day. Just a lot of unlucky posts in a small sample size can do that.