The Rangers roared through the early portion of the schedule by producing one highlight-reel goal after another — or maybe the parlance now is, one GIF-worthy goal after another — off odd-man transition rushes, stretch passes and tic-tac-toe, cross-slot plays.
But the stream of gorgeous goals has slowed to a trickle as opponents have adjusted to the Blueshirts by muddying the track, clogging the neutral zone and forcing the defensemen to operate under duress in their own zone. Indeed, the spigot has been shut off.
So now the question is whether the Rangers, who commute to Brooklyn on Tuesday to meet an Islanders team that is just beginning to play representative hockey, can adapt to the tighter quarters in which they will be forced to compete for most of the rest of the way.
Or have the 17-8-4 Blueshirts been seduced by all the “easy” ones they got through October and the first half of November to the extent that they may have forgotten how difficult it is to score that way in this lowest-common-denominator NHL?
(Which becomes even more difficult with two upper-echelon talents in Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich out of the equation while sidelined with injuries.)
“If we’re being honest with ourselves, we’ve gotten a little stubborn with it, making that extra pass when we’ve got the shot,” Ryan McDonagh told The Post following the Rangers’ practice on Monday. “We’re all victim to it. And I think we’re all aware of it.
“You don’t get that many open looks the way teams defend, close off lanes and block shots, so when you have one, you need to take it. You want to put the puck on net. We’ve been stressing that. On Saturday, early first period, Step comes down two-on-one with Zuke and instead of making what maybe was a high-percentage pass, he shoots off the wing, then goes to the net for his own rebound. I think that’s a good sign.”
McDonagh was talking about Derek Stepan’s 1-0 goal at 4:05 of the first period against the Candy Canes at the Garden on which he eschewed the pass to Mats Zuccarello. And even though it might have been a good sign, it was about the only good sign from the Rangers for about the next 40 minutes, through which they were endlessly stuck in their own zone. Indeed, Stepan’s drive and follow-up represented half of his team’s shots through the first 29:13 of the match the Blueshirts ultimately managed to win by 4-2.
“Were we seduced? Maybe a little. It kind of creeps in,” said Rick Nash, who has reasserted himself as the Rangers’ best forward through the season’s first third. “One of our keys every game is to shoot the puck even if it does seem that we get away from it a little bit. You want to make the simple play. When you keep it simple, other plays open up.”
Maybe it is a mistake to expect the Rangers’ thoroughbreds to become workhorses hauling plows or delivering milk. (Somewhere, horses must still deliver milk, am I right?) Alain Vigneault, the coach who is quite obviously tired of having damning Corsi numbers thrown at him as evidence in a Bill of Impeachment, went into a horses-for-courses explanation when asked whether his team had in fact become seduced by the plethora of early, pretty goals.
“I think that’s part of the equation, but we have [always] been a team whose ratio of goals per shot has been high,” he said. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve always been [toward] the top of the league in quality shots. You can throw pucks at the net all you want, but if they’re not scoring chances, they’re just shots at the net. Some people make it a big issue.
“I agree that we need to get more pucks at the net, that’s something we’ve been talking about, but a lot of the shots we’re getting and a lot of the opportunities we’re creating are of the high-end kind, and that’s probably one of the reasons why we’ve been capable of finishing more than other teams.
“It’s tough. There’s that balance there where you don’t want to take that creativity away from that quality shot they’re seeing on the ice,” he said. “They’re seeing something. When they’re coming up the ice and they’re making that other pass, it’s because they’re seeing something. You don’t want to take that away.”
In other words, the Rangers will dance with the ones they brung to the ball. Whether they’re the right ones for the long haul remains to be seen.