Are the Ranger d coaches that bad?
They are, but I'm not sure I agree so much with your characterization.
These players haven't all actually gotten better. First of all, Graves was misevaluated by the team. They simply whiffed on evaluating his game. He was the best player on our AHL team, and they were bringing up AHL plugs to play instead of him. It was clear at the time they got that one wrong.
As for Pionk, I think this is a great example of where the characterization is wrong. Pionk was pretty good and was playing 1D minutes. He scored a lot of points, played all situations, and showed a lot of talent. But he had brutal advanced stats because he was thrust into a 1D role right away against the best players in the league playing for a terrible possession team. Hence, terrible advanced stats. He gets traded to a team with better advanced stats, a team where he isn't asked to play the same type of role, and his metrics look better. His play probably wasn't actually any better.
Trouba, it's almost the exact opposite. Trouba's points totals were inflated by playing on a great PP that he didn't play on with the Rangers. With the Rangers, he was tasked with taking most of the tough matchups for most of the season. Winnipeg also had better metrics, so his metrics looked better on Winnipeg.
Skjei getting better with Carolina is also questionable. I highly doubt he's gotten better. He's not that talented. Great size and skating. Defended pretty well until the last year or two when his hockey sense was gone. Maybe he did a little better in the Carolina system away from Lindy Ruff, but Skjei is not magic beans. At best, he's an okay mid-pair defensemen. He had warn out his welcome with the Rangers a long time ago.
