New York Rangers Can’t Accept Mediocrity
Dan Rosen of NHL.com was on Sirius XM NHL Morning Skate with Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick and was asked about the New York Rangers. Rosen stated the Rangers can’t run the same roster back or else they are accepting mediocrity.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
New York Change of Mind: Rangers Dominos Begin To Fall
Scott Laughlin: “I got to ask the question, because the Rangers wrap(ed) up their schedule against the Lightning at the Garden. So we’re looking forward to it – Sam Rosen’s final broadcast – and that’s going to be a huge part of the story, for sure. The positive is that we get to celebrate every part of Sam Rosen’s career.
The not so positive, I guess, is going to come, Dan, when you and other reporters have to go talk to the Rangers players at locker clean out a day and to find out about what went wrong and why the President’s Trophy winners from last year came up short and missed the playoffs entirely. And I guess at the end of the day, Dan, are you expecting? Are you expecting change with the New York Rangers in some way, shape or form?”
Dan Rosen: “I am expecting change. You can’t have a season like this and not have change come. If you don’t change, then what are we doing here, right? Like, if you don’t change, you’re accepting the mediocrity of what this season was, and you can’t do that. You’re the team in a rebuild. You’re not a team that’s aging and saying, ‘Oh, we’ve got to go throw everything away and start over.’ No, right, that’s not what the New York Rangers are.
They were the Presidents’ Trophy-winning team last year. They got to the Eastern Conference Final. They brought a lot of that back. And nobody, the only player on the team that I think can honestly say if he says I had a better year this year than I did last year, is Will Cuylle.
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He’s the player on the team who can honestly say that, and I mean even the goaltender, and I don’t put a lot of this on the goaltender. Igor Shesterkin because the play in front of him was not good. The lapses in coverage were consistent. The rush chances against were consistent and the blown and missed assignments in the defensive zone were consistent. The power play struggles were consistent. They didn’t fix these things, right?
So you can’t then say we’re going to run it back, because how could that be acceptable, right? So I do expect change. What those changes are, how deep that change goes, I think remains to be seen. It’s hard to make a lot of changes in the National Hockey League. But look, the Washington Capitals were able to turn over a third of their roster in the offseason last year, and look at the difference its made for them, right? Everything clicked.
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That’s not to say the New York Rangers can’t do the same thing. It’s hard to do. They got a little bit of a jump start on it this season with some of the trades that they made. Some have worked and some you questioned still. It’s going to be a very interesting start to the offseason for the Rangers to see the immediate changes that are made.
And then it’s going to be fascinating to see how they deal with player personnel movement come more than likely, around the draft and obviously free agency, because we know what happened last year with player personnel movement, and it did not work.
So what happens now is going to be really interesting.”
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