If the playoffs started today, Dave Maloney says, you’d have to like the Rangers’ chances.
It’s hard to argue with that.
The Blueshirts are 22-8-4, atop the NHL with 48 points, and surprising everyone with a group that has successfully blended star power with toughness, good special teams and hot goaltending to make what just might be a Stanley Cup contender. It would, as Maloney — the team’s radio analyst points out — be hard to pick against them in a playoff series right now.
But there’s still four months until the postseason begins, and whether they can keep it up will serve as a prevailing test.
“I think, for me, they have a chance [at a run] because they have [Igor] Shesterkin in net,” TNT’s Anson Carter, a former NHL winger who played 54 games with the Rangers, said in a phone interview. “He’s one of the elite netminders in the National Hockey League.”
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Any conversation about the Rangers’ success this year has to start with the Russian, who kept the team afloat with his play for the early part of the season and has played like a Vezina Trophy contender all season. But of late, the Rangers have been less reliant on goaltending.
Artemi Panarin, Adam Fox, Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad have all hit the 30-point mark. Jacob Trouba’s game has taken strides. The acquisitions of Ryan Reaves and Barclay Goodrow — widely maligned as an overreaction to last spring’s Tom Wilson incident — have proven effective. General manager Chris Drury’s hiring of Gerard Gallant has worked.
Maloney and Joe Micheletti, the team’s color analyst on MSG, both pointed to a comment Gallant made during training camp when asked how he’d spent the time between getting hired and the start of camp. Instead of flying around the world to meet his new players, Gallant stayed put, knowing he would see them in camp.
That’s emblematic of an approach that has empowered players.
“He understands what they’re gonna go through,” Micheletti said. “He also understands the importance of the growth of these young players. He makes sure that they get the message that they’re important to the team winning and what they do, and gives everybody enough rope to play. He accepts mistakes to a certain level, and so it’s not a pressure if you make one mistake, you’re gonna be benched.”
ESPN analyst Kevin Weekes, a former Rangers goaltender who was displaced by Henrik Lundqvist, sees a team that’s playing harder in both their own zone and the other team’s zone. That’s something he credits to Gallant, and to the acquisitions of Reaves and Goodrow.
“And all of a sudden, you’re a team that plays with more jack,” Weekes said. “Not at the expense of skill, but it’s just way more competitive. You can be harder on pucks, you engage in more battles. You prioritize defending and boxing out in front of your own net.”
There is still some hesitance to anoint the Rangers as Cup contenders on the same level as the Lightning, Golden Knights and the rest of the league’s top class.
“This is going to be a team now for the next probably five years that I think is going to be a contender,” said NHL Network’s Mike Rupp, who had an 11-year career in the league including 68 games on Broadway. “And they’ve shown they’re able to take that next step.”
But?
“There’s a lot of games that they won that they probably shouldn’t have. … And I think a lot of that was due to goaltending.”
Of course, that’s not necessarily a knock — at least if Shesterkin continues to play at such a high level. But it does leave open the question of what the Rangers look like if he goes through a cold stretch.
Lately, that concern has been less pronounced, as the team survived a stretch in which Shesterkin was hurt and backup Alexandar Georgiev has stepped his game up. It doesn’t hurt to have scoring power like Panarin, Kreider and Zibanejad, or the reigning Norris Trophy winner in Fox. Carter compared the 23-year-old to Brian Leetch, Ray Bourque and Nicklas Lidstrom.
“Ray Bourque used to fire missiles right on your tape, forehand or backhand, so you had to be ready at all times,” Carter said. “As soon as you jumped from the boards, you were an option. A lot of defensemen that wasn’t the case.
“From a defensive standpoint, I would say Nick Lidstrom would probably be the perfect comparison to him. Because Lidstrom was a guy that wouldn’t run you to the end board, but he would always angle you so you’d run out of real estate. And you’d skate yourself into the boards, where you had no options.”
Fox’s role in this team’s core gets at Rupp’s point. The Rangers’ roster is built to contend, not just this year but into the future. There isn’t an obvious spot in their lineup that looks like a hole.
“One could make this case that they could try to get another top-six winger,” Weekes said. “Could they want somebody like a Tyler Toffoli maybe, from Montreal?”
Toffoli could be of use, as could some blue-line depth. But it’s hard to nitpick the way the Rangers are playing right now.
“If this was how they were playing at the end of April,” Maloney said, “boy you’d really like their chances. They’re kicking on all cylinders.”