New York Rangers – Alain Vigneault
Mandatory Credit: Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports
Fine, so Capuano and Johnston have their warts, but surely not Vigneault, right? After all, Vignault is supposed to be as new-school as they come, having unleashed the offense in New York after John Tortorella’s oppressive regime left. I asked Mike Murphy of Blue Shirt Banter to weigh in on Vigneault in case there was a slight chance that he had any gripes whatsoever about the Rangers’ head coach.
"Tanner Glass is under contract for another two seasons after this (God help us) at a cap hit of around $1.5 million. As maddening as the Glass signing was this offseason, it has only been made worse by Vigneault putting him in the lineup over guys who can drive possession like Lee Stempniak or players who are simply not toxic to the team when they are on the ice, like Jesper Fast (prior to his recent injury). Having Tanner Glass out on the ice against almost any quality line or player is a recipe for disaster. He is slow, unbelievably bad at positioning, prone to taking bad penalties, and is often taken advantage of when the Rangers are trapped in their own zone. Oh, and he gets just over a minute a game of PK time. So, why is Glass in the lineup? Well, he’s a veteran and he’s the only Ranger on the roster who will regularly take fighting majors which, for some reason, is still regarded as valuable trait to some."
So Tanner Glass is Jay Beagle who is Craig Adams and I just can’t keep up. Someday those three will unite on some team’s fourth line and hockey analysts will wax poetic about what a TOUGH FOURTH LINE that is to play against. “Guys like that are the GLUE in a locker room boys, despite what all the analytics guys tell ya!” Also, please put me out of my misery if that team is the Caps.
Let’s talk about the Rangers’ power play next and how Vigneault is not doing things to help it succeed.
"There is certainly a preference shown to veterans in regards to power play deployment since Vigneault has taken the reins as the Rangers’ head coach. That Dan Girardi ranks third among Rangers’ defenseman in PP/TOI behind Dan Boyle and Ryan McDonagh is more than a little bit peculiar considering he has almost no offensive acumen whatsoever. The Rangers’ power play is about as hit or miss as it comes and it seems to depend largely on the team they are playing and whether or not they can actually get into the offensive zone without squandering most of the time on the man advantage. When AV landed in New York one of the first things we heard was that he paid attention to metrics and was, by all accounts, a “new school” coach. Obviously, Rangers fans were pretty damn excited after a few seasons of a winning strategy that seemed to be dependent on winning games 2-1 or 3-2 and just praying that Henrik Lundqvist could keep us in games. It seems that as new school as AV is, he does things by half-measures which appears to be what most coaches around the league do in regards to applying the teachings of the “new school”."
It’s funny because the Rangers have a good chance to make another run at the Stanley Cup this year despite having an imperfect coach. Maybe we’ve been way too hard on Barry Trotz after all.