Is It Getting Late Early for the Rangers?

If you are a New York Rangers fan, you probably had some hope heading into this season.

Your favorite team hired a new head coach in Mike Sullivan, a man that won two Stanley Cups coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins, you were hoping to get a strong bounce back season from Mika Zibanejad, and you figured that the team would get enough stellar goaltending from Igor Shesterkin to win games they should not win. You probably thought your wants and needs from your favorite club seemed more than reasonable.

Well, as of this writing (Monday, October 27), it appears that you might have asked for too much from the Blueshirts. The team is currently last in the Metropolitan Division, last in the Eastern Conference, and 28th in the league with a record of 3-5-0-2 for eight points.

Yes, there is still a lot of hockey left to be played. With that said, one has to wonder if the Blueshirts can bounce back and be a contender this season.

For starters, the Rangers play in an extremely competitive division. Teams like the New Jersey Devils (8-1 for 16 points), Pittsburgh Penguins (6-2-0-1 for 13 points), Carolina Hurricanes (6-2 for 12 points), and the Washington Capitals (6-3 for 12 points) are all playing terrific hockey right now and have built themselves a nice cushion to start this season.

One can make the argument that the Penguins will come back down to earth at some point because they are punching above their weight class right now. On the other hand, they are playing a lot better than the Blueshirts right now and if they continue to play this way, they could be a team that gets in the way of the Rangers getting back into the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Something else that should worry Rangers fans is that their team has yet to put in a 60-minute effort. The Rangers will play a good period here and there, but both the team's coaching staff and their fans have not seen a game where their club has played hard for the entire game.

Speaking of not competing for a full 60 minutes, Rangers captain J.T. Miller expressed his frustration about this to reporters after his team's 5-1 loss to the Calgary Flames on Sunday night, October 26th.

“There’s no excuses to come up flat. It sucks. This is not fun right now. We need to correct the starts. I think it’s becoming like the trend now, so we need to fix this now on this trip. I mean, it’s a hard road trip, so we got to be ready to go to start the game.”

The Rangers are also losing to teams that they should beat. There is no way that the team should have lost 6-5 in overtime at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, October 23rd to the lowly San Jose Sharks and they really should have been able to beat the Calgary Flames on Sunday night.

Lastly, the team's defensive play in their past two games has been dreadful. They have given up 11 goals in their last two games to teams that are not exactly known for putting the puck in the net.

Part of the problem has been Rangers' franchise goaltender Igor Shesterkin. Going into last Thursday night's game against the Sharks, Shesterkin was one of the best goaltenders in the league.

Since then, Shesterkin has allowed 11 goals on 54 shots while posting save percentages of .750 and .833, respectively. He cannot be blamed for all 11 goals, but he definitely could have stopped a few of those goals against to keep his team in the games.

The other part of the problem has been the team's defensive play as a whole. Against both the Sharks and Flames, the team's defense was sloppy in their own end and was careless with both the puck and their positioning on the ice.

After his team lost to the Flames on Sunday night, Sullivan said that his club needs to do a much better job of paying attention to the details of the game.

“It’s an elemental aspect of playing defense, is to make sure that you control people’s bodies and you play between the puck and the man,” he said. “You’re fishing for pucks, there’s a lot of talented people in this league, so I just think we’ve got to do a better job at that attention to detail right from the drop of the puck.”

Going into the month of November, the Rangers already put themselves in a very difficult position that they have to climb out of. There might be a lot of hockey left to be played, but with the way things are going right now and the rest of the season ahead, it might be too late for the Blueshirts to jump back into the top half of the standings and play like contenders to get into the postseason.