The New York Rangers had what must be considered a successful weekend, taking three points from two road games to maintain their hold on fourth place in the Eastern Conference. And what if the one victory came at the expense of the Ottawa Senators, a team that is essentially in free fall and should, if there were any justice in this world, be forced to play next season in the American Hockey League as punishment for their woeful performance? (Joining them should be a certain team from Long Island, but that’s another topic for another day). The Rangers’ performance was by all accounts pretty decent, even if they probably should have won Friday’s game in Buffalo. But what stood out most from the weekend wasn’t so much what the team did as what it did not do:
- It did not commit any penalties at all in the Buffalo game or in the first period of the Ottawa game
- The Rangers defense did not give up any goals in the Ottawa game or in the final 28 minutes and 34 seconds of the Buffalo game (including five minutes of overtime). That’s a stretch of 88:34 going into Tuesday night’s game at Nassau.
What do these two points tell us? They tell us this team played with discipline. And that, in turn, tells us they are well-coached.
Say what you will about Renney’s four year (and counting) reign behind the bench at Madison Square Garden, he has always preached defense and discipline as vital parts of any winning team’s makeup. If his team is true to that, he has to be doing something right as a coach.
Granted, “something right” is not enough to guarantee a coach’s success in this town. And we have plenty to fault him on scouting and player development, a system that in four years has produced few bonafide stars (that list starts and ends with Henrik Lundqvist, pretty much). And of course this team has at times also failed at the very principles Renney has said to preach, such as in the embarrassing 5-4 loss to Washington and more recent 6-3 drubbing at home to the Canadiens. But this weekend, at least, it took a step in the right direction.
Finally, consider just how short this team is on real talent: no Jaromir Jagr, no Sean Avery, a first line offense that has a combined age of 96 and a nucleus of largely untested players. Sorry folks, but this is not a team you can realistically expect to challenge for the Eastern Conference top seed. If they make the playoffs as one of the top four teams I’d consider it quite an achievement. If they do so by incorporating Renney’s system and demonstrating that it is jelling into a cohesive unit that gives us reason to hope for the future, then the coaching staff will deserve even more credit. We’re not there yet, and there is a lot that can still go wrong, but firing Renney should be the last thing on anybody’s mind after this weekend.
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This post was written by Nathaniel Baker on January 11, 2009
