The Rangers need to be much better in front of Igor Shesterkin
The New York Rangers are currently 9-4-1 and sit fourth in the Metropolitan Division with 19 points.
It hasn’t been an easy start for New York, who according to Moneypuck.com rank 14th among NHL teams for expected goals against with 32.68%.
Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss how the Rangers need to be much better in front of their elite goaltender, Igor Shesterkin.
Frank Seravalli: This is perhaps a bigger referendum on the New York Rangers and where their game is at currently because I look at the way that the Winnipeg Jets were so opportunistic. The ability of the Jets to create off of very specific Ranger turnovers, and a team that still has a long way to go in terms of defending, is important. There are no freebies like you’re not getting any from them, but still, see too many from the Rangers’ perspective.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah. And Peter Baugh was chatting with Kyle Connor after the game and Kyle Connor said, quote, on the Rangers, “I think they were, for lack of better words, cheating for offense in certain areas. They were going past our defenseman at times and we were able to keep pucks in and make them pay.” Like you’re cheating for offense while you’re shorthanded. It’s insane. But that really does, I think, sum up this Rangers team right now.
Tyler Yaremchuk: When you look at the numbers, and you can look at Artemi Panarin and the guy who’s catching a lot of heat is Mika Zibanejad. He’s got 11 points in 14 games, he’s paid to produce, he’s doing his job. But then you kind of read what Rangers fans are saying about him. You watch some of the goals against clips, and it’s like, whoa, that is not a guy who’s playing a 200-foot hockey game. What can Peter Laviolette do, though?
Frank Seravalli: It’s certainly not the way that he’d like to see this game being played. Just knowing his style and it’s probably the mistakes that miscues and posture general posture of this team are probably driving him a little bit crazy. We have also seen the way this Rangers team has been built, that it’s probably also not changing a lot. What the Rangers are showing right now is kind of what they’ve been for the last two to three years, I think the Rangers can be a good team. I think there’s a lot of runway left in the season to right some of these wrongs but you’re gonna have to teach some old dogs new tricks and that’s easier said than done in today’s NHL. They are so skilled, they can do things that so few teams can’t, but this is not the first season that we’ve been saying that the Rangers are over-reliant on Igor Shesterkin.