For a moment, I thought Peter Laviolette was channeling Alain Vigneault, the head coach who directed the Rangers to the Stanley Cup final and the Presidents’ Trophy in successive years, but forever was tainted by instructing his clubs to turn the other cheek.
(But no, not at all. Let’s review.)
That was a label affixed to Vigneault ever since his 2011 Presidents’ Trophy-winning Canucks were allowed to be bullied by the Bruins in a seven-game series that went Boston’s way, notably marked by Brad Marchand using Daniel Sedin’s face as a speed bag without resistance in Game 6.
In the first round of the 2014 playoffs, Vigneault had obsessed over playing “whistle to whistle” against the Flyers, a lesser team that somehow took the Blueshirts to seven games.
The Rangers were, as ever except for that brief Black-and-Blueshirt interlude directed by John Tortorella, essentially a skill team that finished with the NHL’s best record in 2014-15 despite losing Henrik Lundqvist to a serious vascular injury for nearly two months after he’d been struck in the throat by a shot.
They took out the Penguins in five games before rallying from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Caps in Round Two on Derek Stepan’s Game 7 overtime winner. But they were down 3-2 in the conference finals, facing Game 6 elimination in Tampa after being shut out, 2-0, at the Garden in Game 5.
The Blueshirts responded. They overwhelmed the Lightning, 7-3, to send the series back to New York. There had been an incident in the first period when Steven Stamkos railroaded Ryan McDonagh — who, unbeknownst to the public, was playing his second game on a broken foot — into the wall. Stepan and Chris Kreider both responded, with No. 20 picking up an extra two minutes. Tampa Bay, trailing 2-0, scored a power-play goal to close within 2-1. The Rangers scored the next three goals.
The next morning, Vigneault gave the most tone-deaf response imaginable when asked what he thought about the response.
“I mean, as much as at some point you’re happy that a player protects their teammate,” he said, “and at this time not knowing what the [referees] are going to call, I’m more tempted to say turn the other cheek and let’s play.”
Kreider and the Rangers turned the other cheek at home in Game 7, losing another 2-0 game in a low-energy outing. The Blueshirts have not come that close since.
Fast-forward to last week, a couple of days after Ryan Lindgren picked up an unsportsmanlike penalty adjacent to an entanglement right in front of him in an eventual 2-1 victory over the Coyotes.
“I don’t like things where we retaliate or do something after the whistle,” Laviolette said. “I think frustration can get the better of you — anybody — on any given day.
“But as a group — and I’m not speaking about him — we’d like to stay away from retaliation or things we can avoid because we’re angry and frustrated.”
Upon further review, there was no talk about turning the other cheek. There was some nuance there.
Maybe the Rangers misunderstood, for on Thursday when Nashville’s Jeremy Lauzon leveled Will Cuylle late in the second period, there was no response. That was among much that was lacking in the 4-1 defeat at the Garden.
That was an inflection point of which folks took notice.
And so, when midway through the third period Saturday in Seattle, Yanni Gourde clocked Filip Chytil with a punishing, legal blow, Adam Fox responded first by bashing Gourde from behind and then there came Kreider with a cross-check or two.
They did not allow a teammate to be abused this time. Cheeks were not turned. The Rangers, up 4-1 at that point, won the match by that score.
“[Thursday] night, there were a lot of things that were off,” Laviolette said. “Physicality comes in a lot of different ways, it could be a faceoff battle, a puck battle, maybe sticking up for your teammate…”
The Rangers stuck up for their teammate. The coach sounded as if he approved. No channeling there.
Panarin not overbaked
Laviolette has double-shifted Artemi Panarin on a few different occasions, keeping No. 10 with linemates Chytil and Alexis Lafreniere while also giving him turns with Cuylle and Vincent Trocheck in place of Blake Wheeler.
And while Panarin — the team’s best forward through the 3-2 start — leads Rangers forwards with an average ice time of 19:00 per game, that is 36 seconds less than No. 10 received last year.
It represents the lowest per-game ice time of Panarin’s career since he got 18:31 as a rookie with the 2015-16 Blackhawks.
Panarin’s 19:00 is 58 seconds less than Mika Zibanejad got per game in leading club forwards in average ice time last season.
Fourth-liners are getting between Jimmy Vesey’s 9:41 per and Barclay Goodrow’s 11:10 a game.
The defense’s on-off figures
Fox has not been on the ice for a goal against in 85:57 of five-on-five play, on for three Rangers goals, all while paired with Erik Gustafsson over 24:27.
The Fox-Lindgren pair has not been on for a goal either for or against in 54:46.
The Gustafsson-Braden Schneider third pair comes in with a 61.41 xGF percentage (all stats from Natural Stat Trick) while having been on for three goals for and one against in 45:08.
The Fox-Lindgren pair has a 57.74 xGF%, and the K’Andre Miller-Jacob Trouba duo checks in at 48.24 having been on for three Rangers goals and four against.
Guess which line?
Perhaps surprisingly, the Cuylle-Trocheck-Wheeler unit has the club’s best xGF% of forward lines at 69.23, with Kreider-Zibanejad-Kaapo Kakko at 68.91, the Panarin-Chytil-Lafreniere triumverate at 56.32, the Goodrow-Nick Bonino-Vesey combination (for three games) at 36.01 while the Goodrow-Bonino-Tyler Pitlick trio (for two games) is in at 34.02 (all numbers courtesy of Natural Stat Trick).
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