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Sentiment left the manager suite the second Saturday’s remaining buzzer in Dawn, Fla., signaled the dying knell for the 2023-24 Rangers, and so did romancing the core.
Chris Drury, the final supervisor, is cautious along with his phrases when interacting with the press. He offers away nothing. And so, what Drury mentioned throughout Friday’s convention name with the writers who’ve coated the staff all through the season was notable.
Once I requested the GM if he believes the core — that has basically been in place for 4 or 5 seasons — has sufficient playoff-type qualities to deliver the Rangers to the subsequent degree, the reply was something however pablum.
“I do imagine in our gamers individually. We’ve numerous good gamers right here. A whole lot of gamers had nice seasons,” Drury mentioned. “Various them have been Rangers for a very long time.
“Now’s the a part of the job to determine whether or not this group collectively can get us to the place we need to be.”
However, and that is seemingly a mirrored image of simply how ingrained the core has develop into with the staff id, and definitely because it pertains to senior letter-wearers Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad, however the first query Drury acquired after giving that reply was who the Rangers had been going to take a look at to play proper wing with Nos. 20 and 93.
I understood why a number of gamers and head coach Peter Laviolette known as the season a failure three days after getting knocked out by the Panthers. By Sport 6, it turned a standing TKO.
So I bought that the gamers acknowledged they’d failed to perform their objective. But when you outline this season as a failure, you actually ought to choose up a brand new pastime. The Rangers completed with essentially the most wins and factors and compiled the third-best factors proportion in franchise historical past. They received extra video games than some other staff within the NHL. They received the Presidents’ Trophy.
People pay into the tens of hundreds of {dollars} for tickets to the common season. People obsess over each transfer and each play for the season’s six months. You’re telling me that everything of 2023-24 represented a failure?
The Devils had been a failure. The Penguins had been a failure. The Sabres had been a failure. The Flames had been a failure. The Wild had been a failure. The Rangers play with a splash of aptitude, completed with one of the best file within the league, and that’s imagined to be a failure? What amusing.
It’s not about tradition. You suppose the problem is tradition? What are you speaking about? Did you watch them play this yr? They’re not large enough. You actually suppose that Zibanejad doesn’t care sufficient? He performed 12 video games the final two rounds going up towards two of essentially the most bodily facilities within the NHL in Jordan Staal and Aleksander Barkov, intermittently getting a Sam Bennett as a substitute. That was not a matter of need.
They’re not imply sufficient. They’re not bodily sufficient. They’re not constructed to specs that can get them to 16 wins within the playoffs. Their incapability to attain towards Florida was equal to their incapability to attain towards Tampa Bay two years in the past.
Rehashing the Florida sequence inevitably results in piling on. They didn’t get it executed. You — and the Rangers — can speak concerning the one-goal losses, however each of the Rangers victories got here in time beyond regulation. They might have been swept. They by no means actually bought to their recreation after going up 3-0 towards Carolina. They went 3-6 their final 9 video games. They received two video games in regulation after the Washington sequence.
Once more. Zibanejad has a no-move clause. Kreider has a 15-team no-trade checklist that kicks in July 1. Zibanejad has been the Rangers’ finest middle since Mark Messier I. Kreider has not solely advanced into one of many NHL’s finest objective scorers, net-front presences and penalty killers, however he’s heading in the right direction to develop into the Rangers’ all-time main objective scorer if he completes the remaining three years of his contract in New York.
There are not any gamers who characterize the core greater than Kreider and Zibanejad. The query turns into whether or not Drury and the hierarchy can buttress the core by including physicality round it? I suppose perhaps.
However right here already is one impediment. If the Rangers come to camp with Zibanejad, Vincent Trocheck and Filip Chytil as their top-three facilities, the place is the bodily matchup line, the place is the large, menacing third-line middle? Not for nothing, however that is the staff that gave Bobby Holik, essentially the most menacing matchup man extant, $45 million as a free agent after which performed No. 16 on the primary line.
It’s going to be the identical factor, attempting to assemble three scoring traces. Over and time and again. Besides perhaps not.
“We’re taking a look at numerous various things and there are other ways to get to the place we need to go,” Drury mentioned. “To me, actually nothing is off the desk.”
Possibly I’m flawed — has occurred earlier than, like after I picked the Blueshirts to win the Cup — however I don’t suppose the staff’s precedence at this second is discovering a proper wing to play with Kreider and Zibanejad.
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