Better luck next year: The same flaws exist for the New York Rangers

The only difference this season is they were magnified.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The New York Rangers

Even when the New York Rangers were successful over the past few years it still never felt like a team that was on a championship level given the way they were winning. Rangers fans do not like hearing that because the results were mostly fantastic, and that is all most fans care about. And that is fine. That is all they should care about. That is why you are a fan.

But from a purely objective, outside perspective, the process always left you wanting more and wondering if taking the next step was ever going to be possible.

They relied on an elite power play unit for three consecutive seasons to carry the bulk of their offense and be a game-changer.

They went back to the old well that so many Rangers teams before them had pumped dry, sitting back and waiting for an all-world goalie to mask their defensive flaws and bail them out.

It was not perfect, but it worked. At least to some degree. Together, those two elements carried them to a lot of regular seasons wins, a few playoff series wins, and got them to two Eastern Conference Finals appearances in a three-year stretch.

A lot of teams would take that.

But the flaws that existed beyond those two elements were always significant, and always limited the team’s ceiling and prevented them from fully breaking through.

They did not fix them this season.

Even worse, the two aspects of the team that consistently masked those flaws also took significant steps backwards. That resulted in them missing the playoffs entirely just one year after finishing with the best record in the league.

They became just the fourth Presidents’ Trophy winning team to ever miss the playoffs the year after winning it.

The blame game is going to be fierce.

Peter Laviolette was already the first person to take the fall after getting fired over the weekend.

It was justified.

Not only does Laviolette’s style tend to quickly wear thin on teams, but his lineup usage and player usage was, at times, baffling. I’ve never seen a team have so many players publicly and candidly speak out about their playing time and role in one season.

The veteran core is going to take heat for the way they reacted to the Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba departures, the early season trade rumors, and the way most of them underperformed.

It will also be justified.

When things got tough, and when they faced a little bit of adversity, and when management actually tried to make some necessary changes, they all collectively pouted and went through the motions. They folded.

Between that and the coaching decisions this had to be an absolutely rancid environment.

When it comes to actual on-ice performance, the power play is going to get the bulk of the blame and be pointed at as the root cause for the team’s overall performance.

While that might be true to some extent, it is also true that the Rangers have been too reliant on their power play in recent years, while teams with comparable power plays (specifically Los Angeles and Carolina) still made the playoffs this season — rather comfortably, I might add — and are going into the playoffs as legitimate contenders.

Let’s dig down below all of this and look at some numbers just to get a sense for how similar the Rangers are this season to past Rangers teams, and how the same flaws and processes were never adequately fixed.

Pay special attention to the expected goals columns highlighted in blue and their ability to out-chance teams and suppress chances from their opponents.

Alarmingly consistent. They do not generate chances at an elite rate during 5-on-5 play, are never particularly good at preventing them, and are consistently near the bottom of the league when it comes to out-chancing teams. That is going to limit what you can do offensively without some crazy shooting percentage luck on your side, or a dominant power play.

It is also going to put added pressure on your goalie to have no margin for error.

In each of the previous three seasons both things went the Rangers’ way.

This season the power play was a mess, while the goaltending — from a save percentage standpoint — was simply average instead of elite.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the goaltending, either. They were mostly fine. If anything, I think at times Shesterkin was still a game-saver for them and one of the biggest reasons they are not even lower down the standings. This is a horrific, appalling, and downright terrible defensive hockey team. They stink without the puck.

The surprising thing about this year’s Rangers team is they actually scored goals during 5-on-5 play and finished on the chances they did create. But they were just so bad defensively, and got so little from their power play, that it did not matter in the end.

There is another layer to why the Rangers are in this position, and it goes back to a larger organizational problem that has existed for several years — their inability to develop young talent. Especially at forward.

During the meaty part of their rebuild the Rangers made eight first-round picks between 2017 and 2020, including four in the top-10 (and three in the top-seven). Those picks should have been the foundation of a championship core. They needed to be if the Rangers were going to win a Stanley Cup anytime soon.

Here are the results of those picks as we sit today.

Players in bold are still in the Rangers organization today:

2017 — No. 7 overall: Lias Andersson (traded for a second-round pick in 2020)
2017 — No. 21 overall: Filip Chytil (traded along with an an additional first-round pick for J.T. Miller)
2018 — No. 9 overall: Vitali Kravtsov (traded for William Lockwood and a seventh-round pick)
2018 — No. 22 overall: K’Andre Miller
2018 — No. 28 overall: Nils Lundkvist (traded for a first-round pick in 2023, which was later traded for Vladimir Tarasenko)
2019 — No. 2 overall: Kaapo Kakko (traded for Will Borgen, a third-round pick and a sixth-round pick)
2020 — No. 1 overall: Alexis Lafreniere
2020 — No. 19 overall: Braden Schneider

Lafreniere is good and still has some untapped potential. Miller has had his moments and is one of the few players on the blue line that can skate and move the puck.

But at this point there is not a single star or difference-maker in that bunch.

That is a problem that has also lowered the ceiling with this group.

No matter who the head coach has been over the past decade the Rangers’ style of play has remained the same. The process has remained consistent. They have continually struggled to develop young talent and high draft picks.

If the Rangers go into this offseason recognizing these flaws (defensively, 5-on-5 play, player development) and have a moment of awakening to understand how deep their issues actually are, they might be able to properly fix them. Or at least try to fix them.

If they go into this offseason focused on simply fixing their power play and finding a couple of sacrificial lambs to give everybody their pound of flesh, then nothing is going to change.

Speaking of the power play.

If the Rangers power play had converted on 24 percent of its attempts this season — which would have moved them into the top-10 — on the same number of power play opportunities that they had, do you know how many extra goals they would have scored this season?

13.

If they had converted on 26 percent, matching last year’s success rate, they would have scored 16 more goals.

Was this a team that was 13-16 goals scored away from making the playoffs? Maybe.

Maybe by a slim margin.

But even if it was, was it going to defend enough or play at even-strength well enough to make a serious push at a championship, which was the only goal and expectation anybody had for this team? Absolutely, positively …. not. No way. No chance. Not happening.

An overlooked aspect of the Rangers’ power play struggles this season is not just the drop in percentages. It is that they also had nearly 40 fewer attempts than they did a year ago. That also adds up in a big way. That is also part of the problem with being so reliant on your power play. You can never be certain the opportunities will always be there. Especially in a league like the NHL where penalties are randomly and haphazardly enforced.

What went right this season

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about some bright spots.

Or, more specifically, bright spot.

Adam Fox.