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Ruff has to go

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usekakkorightquinn said:
I watched Howden close last night. He is atrocious at the moment. He has no clue how to kill a penalty. Kucherov has the puck 20 feet in the high slot and he stands there not pressuring him. Mickey Mouse crap. He is easily knocked off the puck in the corners. Right now he shouldn't even be in the NHL and if he is it's 4th line at best. JD needs to step in a do something. Either Quinn starts giving Andersson real time and linemmates or the coach needs to be removed. Fast playing as many minutes as he does is a joke. He's not a part of the future here. Smith even in the lineup is comical. It's one thing to have the average age of y0ur team be the youngest in the league. It's another to actually commit to a rebuild. When you play Fast more than Andersson. Smith more than Andersson. McKegg more than Andersson. You aren't rebuilding. What you are doing is making a lame attempt to build up trade value in vets and get more at the deadline at the expense of a young player. They started the season with the same nonsense playing Staal over Lindgren.

You have a kid in Lettieri that actually seems to be figuring it out the last 5 games of last season. What the heck is the point of playing a lousy, converted defenseman on the 4th line instead of Lettieri? Because the organization was stupid and gave him a big contract and he stunk? Lettieri can actually shoot the puck unlike most of the forwards on our second pp unit. He's a righty shot which is nice.
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Ruff is terrible and the team D is very bad. Something needs to happen to fix that. Howden has showed absolutely no improvement since he came up at first and has maybe gotten worse. He needs to go down. Andersson should at the very least get some time in Howden's role, and if he can't show something in it over a handful of games, he should go down too.

Regarding the rest of the complaints, they're giving like half a dozen very young players very prominent roles this year. The coaching staff isn't afraid to play kids and isn't opposed to rebuilding, that's a big overreaction. Fast is currently superior to Andersson in every single way and is a steadying and safe presence when he's up in the lineup. Him playing over Andersson is totally logical and acceptable imo. Smith and McKegg playing over him is dumb. Having said that, the best time to move Lias up was at the start of the season when he was playing well. Now that he's not showing much, it's difficult to argue that they need to give him more responsibility.
 
Frankly, I think we are going a bit overboard on how bad our defense is. Good? No. But it isn't terrible. There is talent on the back end. A good coach can absolutely get more out of this group than Ruff has. With a few small adjustments and the right coach, I think we are closer to being a top 10 D core than we are to being the worst in the league.

Additionally, this is why I took issue with so many over Marc Staal and the over exaggeration on how much he impacted our team. No, he isn't good. Yes, we are better with him on the bench. But we are still getting killed defensively. Two weeks ago I wasn't so sure how much Lindy was the problem. I am much more certain today. He isn't the right coach for our team.
 
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I'm not a fan of Ruff's and if it were me we would have never hired him in the first place but.......it's highly unusual for a team to fire an assistant coach without firing the coach. I guess there's Mark Hardy but I really can't think of too many other examples. And if you're firing Quinn you're starting from scratch mid-season with a new regime which is not f***ing good......almost never makes a team better and with such a young team it would almost assuredly make the Rangers much worse. As for Knoblauch--we're not looking at a callup when we're talking about an assistant coach. Knoblauch is in Hartford to help Hartford become good again--to create a structure of success for our prospects to move into and help them become NHL players. That's a more important job IMO right now than who coaches the Rangers D.

So to me it's hang on to the coaching staff--get rid of Ruff in the off season. They actually should have got rid of him last off season. I agree--he sucks but it's not the right time.
 
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To add--there have been games this year where the Rangers have looked really good. And then there are the stinkers like yesterday and I think we kind of got to expect both of these things to happen now and again this year with such a young team. The previous game against the Lightning we made them look really bad--yesterday was payback.
 
True Blue said:
We finally have someone coaching competently in Hartford for the kids that are coming. Quick, let's get him out of Hartford.
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Like I said already. There are no kids in Hartford other than Keane, Rykov and the goalies. The rest are scrubs who will never make the NHL.
 
usekakkorightquinn said:
Like I said already. There are no kids in Hartford other than Keane, Rykov and the goalies. The rest are scrubs who will never make the NHL.
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Do you look beyond this year at all? There may well be a solid pipeline, but it takes time for it to start to flow. There will be more players coming next year and the year after that.

For decades this place lamented lack of a solid coach for the developing kids at Hartford. And now, sure, let's make the first knee jerk move

What makes him a better choice that someone like Hitch?
 
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Just be thankful Alain Vigneault's friend Scott Arniel's friend Lindy Ruff didn't also refer a friend to Gorton.
 
usekakkorightquinn said:
Time to bring Kris Knoblauch up and let him control the entire defense of the team. As well as start him off on his way to getting used to the NHL to replace Quinn. I have seen no improvement in the team defense under Ruff and Quinn. Quinn's handling of Andersson last night was an embarrassment to the organization. Kakko is out and you put a career loser in McKegg on the third line. Unacceptable. How many years of watching the PK unit not cover the points and be totally incompetent do the fans have to watch before a change is made. You simply can't win in this league and make the playoffs with the PK unit the way it is and the team defense 36.5 shots per game. Every team can have a game like last night but the team defense here has been a joke under Quinn and Ruff since they began. You can't keep playing the young defenseman card.
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Defense was a joke long before Ruff got here.
 
I've been very outspoken about this coaching issue on the Quinn thread and will add in that if Ruff stays around for the entire year it is a year of wasted development for this core. He's a horrific coach and his methods are outdated by 10 years at this point. The constant retreating into the zone by the defense, the block shots at all costs, etc are all relics of the past and are not the way the game is played circa 2019. Pressure on the puck, tight checking, tight to your man in the defensive zone, chip and chase, high off the glass clears-- that's the way defense needs to be played in 2019 because the players have gotten much faster in 2019 than when Ruff was in his hey day 10 plus years ago.
 
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JHS said:
I've been very outspoken about this coaching issue on the Quinn thread and will add in that if Ruff stays around for the entire year it is a year of wasted development for this core. He's a horrific coach and his methods are outdated by 10 years at this point. The constant retreating into the zone by the defense, the block shots at all costs, etc are all relics of the past and are not the way the game is played circa 2019. Pressure on the puck, tight checking, tight to your man in the defensive zone, chip and chase, high off the glass clears-- that's the way defense needs to be played in 2019 because the players have gotten much faster in 2019 than when Ruff was in his hey day 10 plus years ago.
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Do you remember many instances where an assistant coach and only the assistant coach was fired during the course of a year and not after?
 
There are way more young players to develop on the Rangers than in Hartford. I don't know why people won't look at the facts. Other than Keane, Rykov and the 2 goalies, there are no legit, young talents in Hartford. IMO, I would rather have him up helping to develop Kakko, Chytil, Andersson, Howden, Lemeiux, DeAngelo, Hajek, Lindgren and Fox.

Now, personally I hope they send Howden and Andersson to the minors and let him work with these 2 players.
 
True Blue said:
Do you remember many instances where an assistant coach and only the assistant coach was fired during the course of a year and not after?
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No and that's fair- I don't actually think this will happen, which makes it even worse. The benefit for us is we don't need to deal in the reality of the situation-- we can just say what we want on here because we are not actually in the decision making process.
 
usekakkorightquinn said:
There are way more young players to develop on the Rangers than in Hartford. I don't know why people won't look at the facts. Other than Keane, Rykov and the 2 goalies, there are no legit, young talents in Hartford. IMO, I would rather have him up helping to develop Kakko, Chytil, Andersson, Howden, Lemeiux, DeAngelo, Hajek, Lindgren and Fox.

Now, personally I hope they send Howden and Andersson to the minors and let him work with these 2 players.
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Is David Quinn not capable of developing these players? I have my gripes with Quinn but every player you listed with the exceptions of Andersson and Howden (who should both be in the AHL) are developing just fine without Knoblauch. Is it really a bad thing to have a good development coach at both the NHL and AHL levels?
 
I was actually pretty surprised that Ruff made it through the end of the season last year. Then I thought he would be part of the AHL house cleaning... then I was praying he would be let go before camp started. There was definitely a lot of chatter about it. In the organization as well I hope/presume. It's obvious he isn't adding much to this team's D structure let alone the development of individual players. He's not even interviewed by MSG. It's like he isn't contributing anything.

It's quite shocking the Rangers would hold onto him this long given their commitment to youth movement and preached patience. I think its lazy on the front office's part to have not identified his ineptness and are almost ceremonially putting him behing the bench because he's a veteran guy who once upon a time was a head coach of some decent teams in the 90's and early 2000's. That was 15-20 years ago. He hasn't adapted. Time to move on. He is doing more damage than good.
 
JHS said:
No and that's fair- I don't actually think this will happen, which makes it even worse. The benefit for us is we don't need to deal in the reality of the situation-- we can just say what we want on here because we are not actually in the decision making process.
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Also true. I guess to me there is a vast differnce between and those who rail so hard as if ranting and raving will make a certain event occur, even though logic tells you that the odds are greatly against it. And then they get angry when the result does not happen. Not saying that this is you, just saying.

We can all scream about hypotheticals all we want (and we do) but there are some things that are just not worth arguing about as they stand no chance of occurring.
 
Teams without exceptional talent or experience can still play a system and get decent defensive results (see: Islanders last year). Ruff's "system", whatever it is, isn't successful. We've outshot exactly two teams this year. TWO. The Rangers 42.84 CF% is good for, you guessed it, worst in the league. Lundqvist's HD chance against per game is among the worst in the league.

Ruff should've been gone before this season started. Doubly so now.
 
True Blue said:
Also true. I guess to me there is a vast differnce between and those who rail so hard as if ranting and raving will make a certain event occur, even though logic tells you that the odds are greatly against it. And then they get angry when the result does not happen. Not saying that this is you, just saying.

We can all scream about hypotheticals all we want (and we do) but there are some things that are just not worth arguing about as they stand no chance of occurring.
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Right- I think we are starting to understand each other much better. Sometimes I use this forum as a way to get my frustrations with the team out.

I do think Lindy has to go and I do think after last nights game there was a chance it could happen but the reality is it’s highly unlikely it will before the All- Star game break.
 
Rangers are dead last in (Shots for per game) / (Shots against per game)



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The team is playing so bad from an analytics standpoint, that in theory a roster of completely replacement level skaters would be better than our current roster.
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