The New York Rangers had an eventful July with their
unrestricted free agent work to start the month and their successful signing of
all five key restricted free agents over the course of it. Now that the key pieces of the roster are in
place the questions shift to who plays with whom. The biggest of those questions in terms of
determining how the rest of the lineup will look from night to night is about
which forward will pair with Brad Richards, and Marian Gaborik. Earlier this summer I
took a look at the main candidates for the job, but I left out those that
would have to switch positions to do so.
Others have suggested already that Derek Stepan should be the guy and my
hesitation was not about him handling the top line, but not believing that the
Rangers would shift his position this soon.
Combine that with the glut of players who can play left wing and it didn’t
make a lot of sense, but given the options it clearly is the best one right
now.
Moving Stepan there provides another highly skilled player
who can both finish and create for the Rangers two most skilled offensive
weapons. His combination of vision and
finishing should mesh well with the unselfishness of Richards and the sniping
ability of Gaborik. His willingness to play in the corners and defensive awareness are also positives to add to the line. Stepan is very
effective along the left wing wall and has played there a little in the NHL,
but also spent a good amount of time there at Wisconsin, mainly on the power
play. This is not about the need for
Stepan to improve on his faceoffs, but his comfort along the wall makes the transition,
whether temporary or not, a relatively easy one for him to make.
Since the Rangers should make every effort to keep Dubinsky,
Anisimov and Callahan together, Stepan represents the best combination of skill
and consistency to play with Gaborik and Richards. The best part of about the move is how Stepan
himself would handle the opportunity of playing with those two elite
talents. Stepan would take the
opportunity as a challenge and instead of feeling he could get away with doing
less because of the talent around him, it would only push him to work harder
and get more out of himself.
That is evident from what the New York Rangers official twitter
put out after talking with Stepan about that potential move.
Stepan can obviously move back to the pivot down the line if
it is the best position for him, but for the team next season, having him on
the left wing with Richards and Gaborik is the best thing in terms of balancing
the lineup. It allows the Dubinsky,
Anisimov, Callahan line to stay together as the second line and Fedotenko,
Boyle and Prust to be the third line.
Those three lines give the Rangers their ideal mix of offense and defense
in their top nine forwards. The real
question is whether the Rangers will do it, but then again with how coach John
Tortorella loves to mix and match it is bound to happen at some point.
