A large part of the New York Rangers identity last season
was being a hard/tough team to play against.
The reason for that emphasis was because the Rangers knew that on many
nights they would be the inferior team in terms of pure talent, but effort and
hard work would carry them through in many situations. Chris Botta at Slap
Shot wonders what has happened to that identity of toughness early this
year.
Down: Rangers’ Toughness – So maybe Sean Avery has lost enough of his edge for the pesky wing to no longer merit a job as one of the Rangers’ top 13 forwards. But something is amiss with the Blueshirts. It’s one thing to be winless in three games to start the season; it’s unacceptable to be an easy team to play against. The Rangers need to upgrade their toughness quotient or opponents will continue to skate into their end without a care in the world. Calling up Kris Newbury and demoting Mats Zuccarello to the minors, as Glen Sather did after the loss on Long Island, is not enough.
If Botta is referring directly to the need for more
enforcer/goon types, then I am going to disagree with that as the issue here. The Rangers do have been an easy team to play
against to start the season and it is not because of a lack of enforcer type
presence as Prust and Rupp can be that in terms of fighting. The problem has been their inability to use
their strength on the forecheck to punish teams and wear them down. The only game they did this with any real
consistency was against the Kings and you could see the impact as the game wore
on. Part of the problem in establishing
the forecheck has been the constant penalties which disrupt any rhythm and
momentum that could be built at even strength.
The other part is that the Rangers seem trapped between
wanted to exploit the abilities of skilled players like Gaborik and Richards
while trying to remain as they were last season and they have failed to find
that balance. That part of the problem
should be alleviated to some extent with Stepan showing early returns on the
top line and allowing Dubinsky to go back to playing with Anisimov and Callahan
while Fedotenko returns to Boyle and Prust.
Those two lines were the ones that were responsible for forming the
Rangers toughness identity last season as they hit all that moved and used the
forechecking style to create their offense.
Getting back to a dirty work type game is exactly what the Rangers need
to do for their own offense and to be tougher to play against.
