Post-Game Talk: New York Rangers at New Jersey Devils - December 21

[RangerBoy]

To be fair, AV never gave it a legitimate shot. He broke them up in game 2 of the season at a time when everyone was still playing poorly and Shattenkirk was clearly not adjusted to the system yet.

The Rangers use McDonagh against the opposing team’s best players. PK. D-zone starts. That’s not Shattenkirk. It was a flawed strategy from the beginning.

 

[DanielBrassard]

Generally speaking, what causes mistakes on the backend? Pressure. Not having an out. They make their share of unforced errors, surely, especially Shattenkirk, when they get too fancy. But forwards flying the zone and leaving you no relief valves results in bad choices that look like lazy plays or brainfarts. When was the last time this team consistently went up the ice as a unit?

Tom Renney? Maybe in AV's first season they did it a bit more? But I think you are spot on. It doesn't help that our D is just not a great skating defense outside of Skjei and McDonagh, makes it easy for opposing forwards to close in on them and force bad passes especially when there's little forward support.

 

[Glen Sathers Cigar]

Using Vesey in the shootout isn't an issue.

Using Vesey in the shootout before the likes of Nash/Kreider/Buch/etc. is an issue.

Ding ding ding.

 

[CenturionOne]

48 tonight

That's just stupid. Hank will be a wet rag come April.

 

[Rangers in 7]

What game did you watch? Shattenkirk was beyond horrible this game.

yea he was but he played 3 minutes in the third, he played a poor game but he wasnt the reason we lost....idc how poor of a game he was playing btw hes a better option then f***ing staal and holden who were dumpster fires at times

mac still cant string a pass at all

 

[will1066]

Tom Renney? Maybe in AV's first season they did it a bit more? But I think you are spot on. It doesn't help that our D is just not a great skating defense outside of Skjei and McDonagh, makes it easy for opposing forwards to close in on them and force bad passes especially when there's little forward support.

They try reverse plays. Those work when the opposing team decides to change and they should get a controlled out. But I often don't see the forwards coming back. So often the result is a long pass to center ice or a long pass up the side wall. Even when they try a reverse play, it often goes up the half wall because of opponents' pressure and the forwards not getting to the offside to provide support.

I honestly don't think they're lazy. They play a transition finesse system and the mantra is to stick to the system thinking if they stick to it they will be successful. When they face a strong pressure team, the system doesn't provide plan B solutions. It takes some time for them to make adjustments or the opponent naturally slows down or eases off after coming out of the gates like a bat out of hell. Then we start to play better. Sometimes the other team executes so well for three periods, we're never able to push back.

What's the one position that the system doesn't affect? Goalie. Lundqvist has bad nights but he's never been accused of looking lazy at the start of a game. Quite the opposite. He bails out the perceptibly slow starts.

When slower opponents can't keep up with us, we look like world beaters. We match up well against similar skating and finesse teams. Pond hockey. The strong, fast, and big teams make us look silly.

 

[Kaapo di tutti capi]

Tom Renney? Maybe in AV's first season they did it a bit more? But I think you are spot on. It doesn't help that our D is just not a great skating defense outside of Skjei and McDonagh, makes it easy for opposing forwards to close in on them and force bad passes especially when there's little forward support.

This is one of the main reasons I hate AV’s system. The forwards are high in the D zone and are off to the races once one of our D touches the puck. You’re just begging for tons of high danger scoring chances. It’s either a home run pass or a turnover.

 

[DanielBrassard]

They try reverse plays. Those work when the opposing team decides to change and they should get a controlled out. But I often don't see the forwards coming back. So often the result is a long pass to center ice or a long pass up the side wall. Even when they try a reverse play, it often goes up the half wall because of opponents' pressure and the forwards not getting to the offside to provide support.

I honestly don't think they're lazy. They play a transition finesse system and the mantra is to stick to the system thinking if they stick to it they will be successful. When they face a strong pressure team, the system doesn't provide plan B solutions. It takes some time for them to make adjustments or the opponent naturally slows down or eases off after coming out of the gates like a bat out of hell. Then we start to play better. Sometimes the other team executes so well for three periods, we're never able to push back.

What's the one position that the system doesn't affect? Goalie. Lundqvist has bad nights but he's never been accused of looking lazy at the start of a game. Quite the opposite. He bails out the perceptibly slow starts.

When slower opponents can't keep up with us, we look like world beaters. We match up well against similar skating and finesse teams. Pond hockey. The strong, fast, and big teams make us look silly.

Great post.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

They try reverse plays. Those work when the opposing team decides to change and they should get a controlled out. But I often don't see the forwards coming back. So often the result is a long pass to center ice or a long pass up the side wall. Even when they try a reverse play, it often goes up the half wall because of opponents' pressure and the forwards not getting to the offside to provide support.

I honestly don't think they're lazy. They play a transition finesse system and the mantra is to stick to the system thinking if they stick to it they will be successful. When they face a strong pressure team, the system doesn't provide plan B solutions. It takes some time for them to make adjustments or the opponent naturally slows down or eases off after coming out of the gates like a bat out of hell. Then we start to play better. Sometimes the other team executes so well for three periods, we're never able to push back.

What's the one position that the system doesn't affect? Goalie. Lundqvist has bad nights but he's never been accused of looking lazy at the start of a game. Quite the opposite. He bails out the perceptibly slow starts.

When slower opponents can't keep up with us, we look like world beaters. We match up well against similar skating and finesse teams. Pond hockey. The strong, fast, and big teams make us look silly.

Not disagreeing with you at all but it's hard to compare a goalie and skaters looking lazy.

 

[chosen]

Also, the ex Ranger thing is pathetic, and happens far to often to simply dismiss it as bad luck. It's truly remarkable how often it happens, and would be pretty easy to analytically compare with the rest of the league. I'd be willing to bet, like our dumbass mistakes, that is well above league average.

Unadulterated nonsense.

 

[will1066]

Not disagreeing with you at all but it's hard to compare a goalie and skaters looking lazy.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the skaters are not lazy. It is the style with which they play that makes them look like they're not giving effort, when they are actually being hemmed in their own zone and there's no reasonable play that they can make, so they're forced into mistakes. So much of it depends on man to man coverage, the poke check, the long stretch pass and the transition.

 

[Lion Hound]

I can't believe the Devils are good again.

 

[chosen]

Ding ding ding.

Hayes 50%
Nash 40.9%
Kreider 0%
Buch 0%

Yes, 3 of them are misleading.

 

[ColonialsHockey10]

I feel like you gave me a project that I will spend this whole holiday working on. Although it's probably too big of an undertaking to go through all of the scorers of every game for a few seasons. But I'll try. (My guess is I'll give up before I'm done, haha).

Do it!

If there's a data download function on the NHL website somewhere, and you can pull in all the columns it would be pretty easy to do in excel. Just a lot of Index(match) functions.

 

[Made Dan]

What an abysmal effort. Long live the King.

 

[ColonialsHockey10]

Unadulterated nonsense.

Surely you mean them giving up goals to ex rangers is nonsense, because them giving up more of these goals relative to other teams is completely plausible.

 

[will1066]

I could have had more fun typing random hockey-sounding names like Christian Dubois in the Google search box and seeing what comes up (orthopedic surgeon) last night than watching the game.

 

[Siddi]

Those "more skilled" players are less skilled than Vesey in shootouts.

Plus, teams practice shootouts. How do you know Vesey isn't one of the best shooters in practice, in afdition to being one of the best in real games?

It's not like he put Carey or Holden to shoot 3rd. He picked one of his best.

Something tells me you're blaming Vigneault no matter who missed that 3rd chance.

Now I know that you are not serious.

 

[I Eat Crow]

I can't believe the Devils are good again.

Still waiting for them to crash down to earth. Their shooting percentages are really unsustainable despite all of those shots that they generated against us last night.

 

[egelband]

I could have had more fun typing random hockey-sounding names like Christian Dubois in the Google search box and seeing what comes up (orthopedic surgeon) last night than watching the game.

Kjell plus any last name.

 

[will1066]

Kjell plus any last name.

Here's what I got for Kjell Rasumsson:
Kjell Rasmusson – Wikipedia

 

[NJ07102]

Still waiting for them to crash down to earth. Their shooting percentages are really unsustainable despite all of those shots that they generated against us last night.

Devils have a team shooting percentage of 10.2 % (10th in the league)
Rangers have a team shooting percentage of 10.5 % (8th in the league)
Islanders have a team shooting percentage of 11.3 % (2nd behind Tampa)

 

[aufheben]

Devils have a team shooting percentage of 10.2 % (10th in the league)
Rangers have a team shooting percentage of 10.5 % (8th in the league)
Islanders have a team shooting percentage of 11.3 % (2nd behind Tampa)

The Rangers have had a very high Sh% for 4 consecutive seasons including 2017-18.

Actually the last time I checked, NYR’s Goal+/- vs. Expected Goal+/- was the most balanced in the league. They are what they are.

 

[Mac n Gs]

I can't believe people are still arguing about shootout lineups. I just watched the replay of that tire fire. Goodness f***ing gracious. At least Hayes' offense is regressing back to the norm a bit. Four game point streak going on right now.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

Do it!

If there's a data download function on the NHL website somewhere, and you can pull in all the columns it would be pretty easy to do in excel. Just a lot of Index(match) functions.

I'm going through hockeyreference. I don't think I'll have the patience. I estimated it would take 3 days with no time off for sleep to just get the data for the last three seasons, including this one. I'm going game by game and getting stats from players.

P.S. I really need to learn how to do index/match, I'm old school and do VLookups. I guess I can take a look at a youtube tutorial.