A number of gamers publicly complained about their utilization, taking part in time and position. There was fixed drama round commerce rumors and hypothesis concerning a number of veterans. Exterior of a small handful of gamers, most notably defenseman Adam Fox and goalie Igor Shesterkin, no person actually improved or performed as much as their stage of expectation.
None of that appears good on the teaching workers, and a change was obligatory. Particularly when Laviolette and his teaching model have a historical past of rapidly sporting skinny on groups.
The issue for the Rangers is that, within the quick time period, that is merely a band-aid and doesn’t totally deal with the deeper points within the group and on the roster. There are a number of of them which have remained fixed by all the totally different head-coaching cycles the group has gone by lately, from Alain Vigneault, to David Quinn and now to Laviolette.
On the prime of the record: The group is simply far too depending on their goaltending and has not adequately addressed their defensive shortcomings.
Exterior of Fox, there may be not one other high-end defenseman on the roster, whereas the Rangers constantly end close to the underside of the league in terms of permitting scoring possibilities. Even worse, basic supervisor Chris Drury has locked in most of this present protection on long-term contracts and goes to should get very artistic in terms of shifting a few of them out and fixing the place.
At ahead, they’re nonetheless missing the kind of top-tier, No. 1 middle that each contending group has to have.
Mika Zibanejad has performed in that position, and whereas he has had his moments over time, his total play has quickly deteriorated. Particularly throughout 5-on-5 play. He’s simply not a difference-maker and is making $8.5 million towards the cap for one more 5 years, whereas he has commerce protections in his deal. Transferring him could be extraordinarily tough.
They made a blockbuster transfer for J.T. Miller on the commerce deadline, and whereas he has been a really productive ahead he’s additionally going to be 32 subsequent season and already noticed some decline in his manufacturing this season.
As if all of that’s not sufficient, the Rangers have additionally didn’t develop just about each prime ahead prospect and draft decide they’ve had over time and have already moved on from virtually all of them.
Gamers like Alexis Lafreniere, Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, Lias Andersson and Vitali Kravtsov had been imagined to be the core of a championship group after being excessive first-round picks throughout their rebuild. Lafreniere is the one one nonetheless remaining on the roster, and his 2024-25 season was extraordinarily disappointing and a giant step backward.
These aren’t new issues. They aren’t issues distinctive to Laviolette’s tenure. Even when the Rangers had been successful and competing in current seasons, these flaws and questions nonetheless existed and restricted their ceiling. They had been simply masked by elite goaltending and a dominant energy play. This season, the goaltending was merely actually good as an alternative of elite, and the ability play struggled. These two developments simply magnified the failings that already existed.
The Rangers want a brand new coach. In addition they want much more.
