Player Discussion David Quinn: Part V

[Tawnos]

What do you mean still arguing about this? The PP has been a horror show all season up until this past month. But when you look at who they played, you simply cannot just say the PP is no longer a problem and neither is Oliver or Quinn. It is so disingenuous to point to their stats over the last month and ignore all the facts that led to those stats, to puff your chest out and say see FIXED.

Yeah Zib has finally been getting some breaks and has more jump in his game, but I mean cmon, on one of his PPG against the Flyers it was a cluster f*** in front of the net. The goalie (forget if it was Hart or Elliot, I think Hart) was completely being turned around, lost his stick and had no idea where the play was. Thats what happens when you play a shit show of a hockey team. Thats the freaking point. Nothing is actually fixed. They still have too many righties on the 1st unit. They have no opportunity to tee up a one timer on the right wing boards with the lefty shot because thats where Strome is. It doesn’t keep the PKers honest, they can favor one side knowing where the shot is coming from 95% of the time. And against better teams, there numbers drop a lot.

So I guess sure, if its not important to have the PP actually improve to be able to be a difference maker against better teams then by all means bask in this. Settle for just ok.

You say "all season up until this past month" like the "all season" you refer to wasn't just 45 days.

 

[smoneil]

You say "all season up until this past month" like the "all season" you refer to wasn't just 45 days.

Over the last two games, Chytil is the team's leading goalscorer. I don't understand why people are against giving him more minutes. Because, you know, leading goalscorer. Over those last two games.

 

[True Blue]

I guess it doesnt matter that a large majority of their PP success has come against the worst defensive teams in the East. Or does that not matter because it doesnt fit your Quinn defense? We should just consider the PP resolved because they beat on bad teams that cant defend.

What a lazy response.

What a lazy post. Sure. Let’s start to grade on a curve by completely arbitrary standards. Who cares where the success came from? It was a success. But acknowledging success means cutting against a narrative that refuses to name anything as a success .

 

[smoneil]

What a lazy post. Sure. Let’s start to grade on a curve by completely arbitrary standards. Who cares where the success came from? It was a success. But acknowledging success means cutting against a narrative that refuses to name anything as a success .

It was a success, but it was also a clear aberration. More than half of the PP goals in that artificial time frame that supposedly makes our PP one of the best in the league came against one team in the midst of a collapse SO epic that literal NHL records were broken.

Let me put it another way. If you are bowling, and your team has a shit score through 5 frames. Then someone puts in the kiddie bumpers and lets you bowl from halfway down the lane for a few frames. Your team's score is STILL pretty damn bad (25th out of 31 teams) after 8 frames, and everybody saw that your three great frames had more to do with the bumpers and moving closer. Do you go up to people and start bragging about how "over the last three frames, I'm one of the best bowlers in this joint"? I certainly hope not, because it'd be pretty damn pitiful.

The more we delude ourselves that those Flyers games are what we should expect from this PP, the more pissed off we're going to get when it doesn't happen. We can't play Carter Hart in crisis every game.

 

[aufheben]

New York Rangers fanbase downplaying Power Play success...this might be the “last exit” sign.

 

[Shesterkybomb]

Yea lets not look who their actual PP success was against. Just group it all together and yell FIXED!

Cherry picking to fit a narrative. If we start taking stats away from teams based on their competition then every team's pp percentage goes down, are you planning on adjusting Washington's, Pitsburgh's, Boston's pp percentage too? Im sure teams would love to forget their pp's against us because we have one of the better PK in the league, do we adjust for that or do we just ignore that? Why don't you tell us which teams we are allowed to count pp goals against so we know.

 

[Tawnos]

Over the last two games, Chytil is the team's leading goalscorer. I don't understand why people are against giving him more minutes. Because, you know, leading goalscorer. Over those last two games.

Yeah, there's always a certain amount of ridiculousness to splitting up statistics like this, but I do think there's something to it when you use a team breaking out of an early season slump as a dividing point. It's sorta like when the Rangers were 3-3-3 after 9 games in 2011-12 and went on to be the 1st seed in the Eastern Conference. Were those first 9 games really indicative of who the Rangers were that year, or did it just take 10 games to settle into who they were? It's a short year this year, so a bad start is going hurt way more than it might have in a different situation. That really sucks for us.

To me, the best dividing point is when the Rangers came out of that 4 game losing streak in early-mid February where they got shut out twice and played just awful, awful hockey. There have definitely been bumps since then, where they've been just as bad as that stretch, and even bumps where they've won anyway (like last night). But since that 4 game streak, the team is 13-8-1 with a 0.614 p% (4th in the division, 13th leaguewide). The PP is at 21.5% for 11th in the league. The PK is 86.2% for 4th in the league. The GF/G is 2nd in the league. The GA/G is 14th in the league.

And this all happened with injuries to skaters, a leave of absence for the team's best player, Covid, and an injury to their starting goalie. I have my frustrations... we all do... but I have been pretty happy with the team overall, for around a month and a half now... in a season that is only two and a half months old. My frustrations certainly aren't larger than my satisfaction. Will it continue? We'll see... not really in the predicting game.

 

[Tawnos]

Cherry picking to fit a narrative. If we start taking stats away from teams based on their competition then every team's pp percentage goes down, are you planning on adjusting Washington's, Pitsburgh's, Boston's pp percentage too? Im sure teams would love to forget their pp's against us because we have one of the better PK in the league, do we adjust for that or do we just ignore that? Why don't you tell us which teams we are allowed to count pp goals against so we know.

If you took away each team's 2 or 3 best powerplay games of the season, you know where they'd shake out? Roughly exactly where they already are.

 

[Shesterkybomb]

Our pp started working better when Mika started hitting the net. He was blowing prime scoring opportunities regularly most of the season by missing the net, not by a little bit but by 6 inches or more, that was why our pp was abysmal compared to the last 2 or 3 weeks. If there's a complaint to be made its that they never took mika off the pp earlier this year until he figured it out.

 

[Shesterkybomb]

If you took away each team's 2 or 3 best powerplay games of the season, you know where they'd shake out? Roughly exactly where they already are.

Why would you do that though? Are they pp goals or not?

 

[Tawnos]

Why would you do that though? Are they pp goals or not?

I wouldn't. I was basically agreeing with you. The idea of pulling games out just because we were extra successful on the PP or in GF and the opponent was really bad is silly unless you're doing it for every team. But if you do it for every team, you end up in roughly the same place you started.

 

[RGY]

Cherry picking to fit a narrative. If we start taking stats away from teams based on their competition then every team's pp percentage goes down, are you planning on adjusting Washington's, Pitsburgh's, Boston's pp percentage too? Im sure teams would love to forget their pp's against us because we have one of the better PK in the league, do we adjust for that or do we just ignore that? Why don't you tell us which teams we are allowed to count pp goals against so we know.

I’m the one cherrypicking??? Some of you are so quick to jump up and mask all the bad because of a small sample size of success. Success that came against really bad teams. You want to say the problem no longer exist because of that success, god bless you if you can look at everything in a vacuum and just be happy that you are alive.

Its, as I said, disingenuous to try to play the card ‘well if you took away some other teams PP success against bad teams, they would be ranking x among the 31 teams’. 1) Thats not the case for the best PPs in the league and 2) You are completely missing the point. The point is, how in the world can you look at the PP “success” over a month and just accept that as hey were good here, no worries, without looking into it deeper having known how spectacularly bad the PP had been all year ranking roughly anywhere from 25th - 28th. I mean thank God they beat up on Philly otherwise the PP would still look pretty abysmal statistically.

Washington is ranked 7th right now
Boston is ranked 11th.
Pittsburgh ranked 15th.

They havent gotten there just from beating up on bad teams.

Even with the Rangers recent bump/surge, they are still ranked 25th. So wouldnt you maybe have a bit of pause before signing off that things are great now? Yes Zibanejad was not hitting the net earlier this year, and yet the PP units hardly changed in personnel or approach. In fact its still the same style, method, setup. They dont get enough shots on net, they favor the left side heavily, make too many cross ice passes, and have too many righties.

Why is this team and coaching staff exempt from criticism?

 

[Shesterkybomb]

I’m the one cherrypicking??? Some of you are so quick to jump up and mask all the bad because of a small sample size of success. Success that came against really bad teams. You want to say the problem no longer exist because of that success, god bless you if you can look at everything in a vacuum and just be happy that you are alive.

Its, as I said, disingenuous to try to play the card ‘well if you took away some other teams PP success against bad teams, they would be ranking x among the 31 teams’. 1) Thats not the case for the best PPs in the league and 2) You are completely missing the point. The point is, how in the world can you look at the PP “success” over a month and just accept that as hey were good here, no worries, without looking into it deeper having known how spectacularly bad the PP had been all year ranking roughly anywhere from 25th - 28th. I mean thank God they beat up on Philly otherwise the PP would still look pretty abysmal statistically.

Washington is ranked 7th right now
Boston is ranked 11th.
Pittsburgh ranked 15th.

They havent gotten there just from beating up on bad teams.

Even with the Rangers recent bump/surge, they are still ranked 25th. So wouldnt you maybe have a bit of pause before signing off that things are great now? Yes Zibanejad was not hitting the net earlier this year, and yet the PP units hardly changed in personnel or approach. In fact its still the same style, method, setup. They dont get enough shots on net, they favor the left side heavily, make too many cross ice passes, and have too many righties.

Why is this team and coaching staff exempt from criticism?

The pp success started with Mika's success and his ability to actual hit the net and provide a shooting threat. Ignoring the fact that our pp heavily relies on him and that he was terrible up until the last couple weeks and then saying it's the competition isn't accurate. The pp is decent with all the pieces healthy and in game shape and our recent stretch is the first time that Zib has looked right. Panarin also missed a chunk of the year, it all adds up to a bad pp when you stare at the pp%, but we were creating the same chances earlier but Mika couldn't hit the side of a barn, earlier in the year he would have missed the net on that ot goal the other night he was that bad. I thought our pp looked good against Washington last game, they aren't poor competition.
The coaching staff isn't exempt from criticism, they should have taken Mika off pp1 when he was struggling so bad because it was killing the pp.

 

[Ola]

“I think sometimes we tend to shoot more for quality not quantity and sometimes it helps us and sometimes it doesn’t. I think especially with our top guys you can’t micromanage it.

Who tried to micromanage our top guys??

 

[SA16]

Who tried to micromanage our top guys??

presumably nobody considering that’s what the quote says

 

[eco's bones]

Better teams usually have better penalty kill units and are much harder to get power play goals against. It’s partly why they’re better teams.

 

[Off Sides]

As was pointed out, Chytil and his line struggled in their own end. Noticeably. As such, is it really that much of a surprise?

If one wants to say that Chytil's wings are having a difficult time in their own zone, I think that is a better argument.

In which case why are those his wings instead of say Blackwell and/or DSG?

I understand the optics of Lafreniere being on the 4th line or even scratched are not ideal, and they are interested in seeing more from Gauthier, yet it's not doing Chytil any good to give him less ice time because his wings are not very good in their own end.

 

[kovazub94]

If one wants to say that Chytil's wings are having a difficult time in their own zone, I think that is a better argument.

In which case why are those his wings instead of say Blackwell and/or DSG?

I understand the optics of Lafreniere being on the 4th line or even scratched are not ideal, and they are interested in seeing more from Gauthier, yet it's not doing Chytil any good to give him less ice time because his wings are not very good in their own end.

It’s a balancing act for sure (in which Quinn gets blame no matter what he does). He has an approach to the game (eg Lafreniere on the 3rd line) but also needs to make adjustments within game depending on how the overall game is going and how particular players perform (including considerations to their history and experiences to this point). Being a fan and having a hindsight is the easiest way to “determine” that the head coach is an idiot and a said fan is smarter by a mile and obviously would’ve done a much better job than the coach.

 

[Off Sides]

It’s a balancing act for sure (in which Quinn gets blame no matter what he does). He has an approach to the game (eg Lafreniere on the 3rd line) but also needs to make adjustments within game depending on how the overall game is going and how particular players perform (including considerations to their history and experiences to this point). Being a fan and having a hindsight is the easiest way to “determine” that the head coach is an idiot and a said fan is smarter by a mile and obviously would’ve done a much better job than the coach.

Please don't lump me in with the Quinn is a bad coach group, I think he is a very average coach.

That said, Chytil is actually a good developing player who should at least be getting top 9 forward playing time 5on5. If his wings are the reason he is not getting that time, the line should be modified.

Easiest way, put Blackwell on his wing and they would both get that top 9 ice time.

 

[kovazub94]

Please don't lump me in with the Quinn is a bad coach group, I think he is a very average coach.

That said, Chytil is actually a good developing player who should at least be getting top 9 forward playing time 5on5. If his wings are the reason he is not getting that time, the line should be modified.

Easiest way, put Blackwell on his wing and they would both get that top 9 ice time.

Oh, I’m not lumping you - wasn’t my intention - but it’s a view by a huge vocal group here so my post was partially to them.

As far as Chytil’s linemates go, I am not convinced that Blackwell is an option for top-9 for more than a few games at a time and what would you do with Lafreniere - 4th line or sit out?

 

[Off Sides]

Oh, I’m not lumping you - wasn’t my intention - but it’s a view by a huge vocal group here so my post was partially to them.

As far as Chytil’s linemates go, I am not convinced that Blackwell is an option for top-9 for more than a few games at a time and what would you do with Lafreniere - 4th line or sit out?

Chytil is in his 3rd season (with more than 9 games played), he was good before injury, he has been good these past couple games, he should be playing more than Rooney 5on5, and not just a minute more.

Even ice time past two game, Chytil 9:52, 12:16, Blackwell 11:39, 12:56 (Rooney 10:31, 11:49)

Seems like if the Rangers just played Chytil and Blackwell together they could give both around ~13-15 minutes of even ice time per game. (sans PK where Rooney gets more ice time on PK as he should)

If that means Lafreniere or Gauthier end up on the 4th line, they are already basically getting 4th line ice time even strength anyway, ~7-10 minutes

 

[Tawnos]

I’m the one cherrypicking??? Some of you are so quick to jump up and mask all the bad because of a small sample size of success. Success that came against really bad teams. You want to say the problem no longer exist because of that success, god bless you if you can look at everything in a vacuum and just be happy that you are alive.

Its, as I said, disingenuous to try to play the card ‘well if you took away some other teams PP success against bad teams, they would be ranking x among the 31 teams’. 1) Thats not the case for the best PPs in the league and 2) You are completely missing the point. The point is, how in the world can you look at the PP “success” over a month and just accept that as hey were good here, no worries, without looking into it deeper having known how spectacularly bad the PP had been all year ranking roughly anywhere from 25th - 28th. I mean thank God they beat up on Philly otherwise the PP would still look pretty abysmal statistically.

Washington is ranked 7th right now
Boston is ranked 11th.
Pittsburgh ranked 15th.

They havent gotten there just from beating up on bad teams.

Even with the Rangers recent bump/surge, they are still ranked 25th. So wouldnt you maybe have a bit of pause before signing off that things are great now? Yes Zibanejad was not hitting the net earlier this year, and yet the PP units hardly changed in personnel or approach. In fact its still the same style, method, setup. They dont get enough shots on net, they favor the left side heavily, make too many cross ice passes, and have too many righties.

Why is this team and coaching staff exempt from criticism?

The bad teams we're talking about here are the Sabres, Devils, and Flyers right?

Rangers PP vs those 3: 26% (vs the other 4: 12%)
Washington: 31% (vs the other 4: 20%)
Boston: 34% (vs the other 4: 15%)
Pittsburgh: 31% (vs the other 4: 15%)

Looks to me like those other three powerplays got to where they are by beating up on the bad teams all season, while the Rangers only started doing it relatively recently. If the Rangers produced PP goals against those 3 teams like the other teams we're looking at did, their season ranking would jump to 18th.

Did you think no one would look at your claims in this post?

 

[kovazub94]

Chytil is in his 3rd season (with more than 9 games played), he was good before injury, he has been good these past couple games, he should be playing more than Rooney 5on5, and not just a minute more.

Even ice time past two game, Chytil 9:52, 12:16, Blackwell 11:39, 12:56 (Rooney 10:31, 11:49)

Seems like if the Rangers just played Chytil and Blackwell together they could give both around ~13-15 minutes of even ice time per game. (sans PK where Rooney gets more ice time on PK as he should)

If that means Lafreniere or Gauthier end up on the 4th line, they are already basically getting 4th line ice time even strength anyway, ~7-10 minutes

Blackwell has his ups and downs so the last few games don’t guarantee the same minutes as early as next game tonight. He also seems to be working well with Rooney so there’s this too. Coming of the hand surgery and Covid (in barely 4 weeks) I’m sure the coaching staff is keeping it in mind.

I like Chytil a lot. My stance is that he’s AT LEAST 1B center in his prime which is more optimistic than probably 80% of the board. Each year he’s getting better. Is he going to be shortchanged in some games because he’s only 21 and sometimes gets to play with 4th liners or those not ready for top-6 but no skill sets for the 4th line? Sure, but I don’t think it’s detrimental to Chytil’s development at all and if the team wins - I have no problem with it.

Last night specifically while not getting much ice time through the first two periods - I saw Quinn start giving Chytil’s line regular shifts through the most of 3rd period and the these shifts were very good. He was basically forcing coach’s hand and that’s what he should continue to do and forget everything else.

 

[Off Sides]

Blackwell has his ups and downs so the last few games don’t guarantee the same minutes as early as next game tonight. He also seems to be working well with Rooney so there’s this too. Coming of the hand surgery and Covid (in barely 4 weeks) I’m sure the coaching staff is keeping it in mind.

I like Chytil a lot. My stance is that he’s AT LEAST 1B center in his prime which is more optimistic than probably 80% of the board. Each year he’s getting better. Is he going to be shortchanged in some games because he’s only 21 and sometimes gets to play with 4th liners or those not ready for top-6 but no skill sets for the 4th line? Sure, but I don’t think it’s detrimental to Chytil’s development at all and if the team wins - I have no problem with it.

Last night specifically while not getting much ice time through the first two periods - I saw Quinn start giving Chytil’s line regular shifts through the most of 3rd period and the these shifts were very good. He was basically forcing coach’s hand and that’s what he should continue to do and forget everything else.

I have a different take, I think Quinn plays Chytil less because he does not trust his wings defensively, which I think is evident by all the players in the bottom 6 based on their ice time at even.

So, I think if that is the case, Quinn should just form a 3rd line around Chytil that he'd play more often even. He seems to like to give Blackwell ice time (which I am fine with too), so I think he should be part of that line.

If he wants to change it up based on score, Rangers leading by two or more, and then give Laff or Gauthier more ice time by moving them up, then do that in game.

 

[Off Sides]

Or alternatively if he wants to break up his top 2 lines, and make 3 lines including Chytil, where Chytil's line also gets more even ice time, that works too.