Zibanejad is a major problem in this series. He is the biggest deciding factor. He has been laughably bad offensively, but that would be omitted if he was shutting Crosby down. He has done nothing to stop him.
Complete utter meltdown from Zibanejad. Extremely concerning moving forward
But it’s not a meltdown. It’s just reality. Mika is a 1C. Crosby is - still - an all world, all time great C. Mika is simply out classed. And because he’s out classed and trying to punch above his weight matched up against a guy who is not only all world, but specifically all world in clutch situations like 3 Stanley Cups, Olympic gold, etc., he is gripping the stick tight and every mistake is amplified. If the team were picking up the slack for him anywhere it could help, but he’d still be outclassed.
The problem is Mika is outclassed and can’t shutdown or slow down Sid and the entirety of the roster is playing soft perimeter hockey and atrocious defense. So there’s no respite. On a good team, sometimes even the best players go through a stretch where they need someone else to step up and carry the bag, and some guy like Coyle or Debrusk or Haula gets hot and pops in 4-5 points across 2 games while Marchand and Bergeron regroup. No one is carrying the bag for anyone in our locker room. Everyone is letting each other down and no one is lifting anyone up.
It’s an all around systemic failure and it’s in large part down to the fact that, regardless of the coach, the Panarin/Mika led Rangers aren’t a team that does the dirty work. We brought in some guys to try and remedy that in Copp, Goodrow, Motte, Blais, etc. and ended up with only a 50% injured Copp in the lineup. Lindgren and Trouba I guess were the only other guys in the lineup who play that game and Lindgren is out as well. That gives us an overworked, outclassed Trouba and a 50% Copp doing all the dirty work? So no dirty work gets done. But even if those guys were all healthy, I think the larger problem persists. The final score might look better, we might even claw our way out of the series, but it wouldn’t change the fact that Mika, Kreider, Bread, Strome just don’t play a style that succeeds in the playoffs and won’t change their style to do so. Fox has caught the overpassing bug as well and it’s poison in these types of games.
I don’t have an answer for this team. We don’t have the cap flexibility to address the things that need to be addressed. We have little choice but to go into next season with this exact same roster, minus either Copp/Strome. Hopefully Nemeth is gone, hopefully we can add a better veteran and we have one or two kids joining the team full time. But there really isn’t wiggle room for significant change unless one of the big names is moved. I don’t really feel that the kids gaining experience is the answer - they haven’t been the problem. Until that leadership group learns to play like winners, even having all the depth of Goodrow and Motte and healthy Copp doesn’t change the fact that the top guys don’t play hockey that gets it done in the post season.
Look at any other series and you’ll see Pastrnak and Bergeron and Marchand, MacKinnon and Landeskog and Rantanen, Aho and Svechnikov, Crosby and Guentzel, O’Reilly and Perron, etc, etc. playing relentless hockey and spending a lot of time INSIDE the circles and around the paint. Our guys play along the walls.
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