A number of gamers publicly complained about their utilization, taking part in time and function. There was fixed drama round commerce rumors and hypothesis relating to 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 needed. 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 brief time period, that is merely a band-aid and doesn’t totally tackle the deeper points within the group and on the roster. There are a number of of them which have remained fixed by way of all the completely different head-coaching cycles the staff has gone by way of lately, from Alain Vigneault, to David Quinn and now to Laviolette.
On the prime of the checklist: The staff is simply far too depending on their goaltending and has not adequately addressed their defensive shortcomings.
Exterior of Fox, there’s 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, normal supervisor Chris Drury has locked in most of this present protection on long-term contracts and goes to must 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 heart that each contending staff has to have.
Mika Zibanejad has performed in that function, and whereas he has had his moments through the years, 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 in opposition to the cap for one more 5 years, whereas he has commerce protections in his deal. Shifting him can 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 isn’t sufficient, the Rangers have additionally did not develop just about each prime ahead prospect and draft choose they’ve had through the years 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 purported to be the core of a championship staff 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 will not be new issues. They don’t seem to be issues distinctive to Laviolette’s tenure. Even when the Rangers had been successful and competing in latest 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 facility play struggled. These two developments simply magnified the issues that already existed.
The Rangers want a brand new coach. In addition they want much more.
