Why this is the Rangers' best crack at a Stanley Cup
Conventional wisdom would say that a New York Rangers team making the postseason for the first time in five years is at the beginning of a contending window. However, since New York’s rebuild was unconventional, they didn’t experience the typical contender arch.
Much of New York’s “rebuild,” was done by acquiring already established NHL talents like Artemi Panarin, Jacob Trouba, Ryan Strome, and polished developed players like Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin.
For all the fanfare around the letter to fans in the spring of 2018 announcing a rebuild, the two prizes — Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafrenière — are pretty far down the list of contributors for the 2022 team about to embark on a playoff run.
In an ideal world, Kakko and Lafrenière are both driving forces in maintaining a window of contention for a several-year period. However, banking on massive leaps from players who’ve never shown a dominant streak at the NHL level isn’t a safe bet. Instead, New York is leaning on an older and more expensive group to carry the bulk of the responsibility for team success. No, I didn’t forget Fox exists, he’s obviously only 23 years-old, but he’s an outlier amongst the group.
More pressingly, New York is simply not going to be able to bring this group back next season. With only a $1 million increase for the salary cap expected for the 2022–2023 season and several players in need of new contracts, the math doesn’t work out.
Furthermore, aside from it being impossible to bring back the current team based on salary considerations, there is an obvious factor to consider.
Four players on the Rangers are easily having the best statistical seasons of their respective careers. There are no guarantees in hockey and banking on career years going forward is not a real plan for success.
Igor shouldering the load
Goaltending in hockey is the most volatile position in all of sports. Outside of a handful of elite players at the position, you cannot bank on goaltending carrying over year to year. Since goaltending is so contingent on the play in front of them, it’s almost impossible to forecast future play no matter how talented the netminder is.
Shesterkin has all of 98 games of experience at the NHL level. In Shesterkin’s first full season as a starter, he’s thrived in a way few goalies have this decade. With offense up league-wide, Shesterkin has saved 38 goals saved above expected, the 6th highest of any goaltender since the 2008–2009 season when the stat tracking began.
So, based on where shots against Shesterkin came from, teams were expected to score 38 more goals in his 51 games this season. That’s roughly .74 goals per game, meaning that in 3/4s of New York’s games, Shesterkin stole a goal away from the other team on average.
Throw in the fact that Shesterkin had this breakout season behind a poor Rangers team defense and you get an idea of just how tenuous team success was. New York was 24th in percent of scoring chances, 23rd in expected goals-for percentage, and 20th in high danger chances for percentage.
So more often than not, the team New York was playing generated both more total and more quality scoring chances than the Rangers were. Shesterkin picked up his teammates with an all situations .936 save percentage, the highest of any goaltender to make at least 30 starts since Brian Elliott in 2011–2012.
Now, there’s no reason to expect a dramatic fall-off from Shesterkin next season. However, there is a huge difference between having a top ten goalie season of the last decade and just a normal top-five goaltender season.
Taking this year’s fifth-place goalie in goals saved above expected, Jacob Markstrom of the Calgary Flames 17.31, that’s less than half of Shesterkin’s mark. That’s saving a goal in about half of the team’s games, a whole 25 percent less than Shesterkin.
New York got one of the best goaltending seasons in recent league history. Even a really good season instead of an elite one will require the rest of the roster to make dramatic improvements in play, especially defensively. It’s simply not realistic to expect Shesterkin to be a .936 goaltender every season. The consensus best goalie in the league coming into the season, Andrei Vasilevskiy, is a career .919 save percentage goalie. That’s still good, just not otherworldly good.
If Shesterkin is closer to top-five goalie in the league as opposed to the best goalie in the league, the Rangers will need to score more goals.
The year 10 breakout
Trying to explain Chris Kreider breaking out at 30 years-old is one of the sport's great mysteries. For the better part of ten seasons, Kreider was a good player with the occasional flash of greatness, an aptitude for net-front play and game-breaking speed.
Coming into the season, Kreider’s previous career-high in goals was 28. So, to hit 51 goals after nine seasons in the league is more or less out of nowhere.
Going under the hood, Kreider is averaging two more scoring chances, .3 expected goals, and about four more high danger chances per 60 than last season. Of course, anytime a player hits the 50-goal plateau, luck is a factor. Kreider sitting at a career-high shooting percentage of 20.8 percent is not a coincidence.
Since Kreider became a full-time NHLer in 2013–2014, New York had never had a top-five power play before this season. In fact, the Rangers’ power play this year converts a goal 26.09 percent of the time, 3.18 percent better than any other power play since Kreider got to the league.
The Rangers' power play has unlocked a higher level this season and the tactics will likely carry over into the future. But, it’s unrealistic for anyone to expect 50 goals from Kreider ever again. This is a career-best from Kreider at a point when the team desperately needed it.
For the first 2/3rds of the season, the power play was basically the only offense New York could generate. This season, the Rangers’ power play has accounted for 23 percent of the team’s 240 goals through 78 games.
They finally got a glimpse of Kreider’s skillset when used to its fullest potential. For whatever reason, New York was able to get a full season of engagement from Kreider, a player who was notorious for disappearing games at a time in the past.
Very few players have career-best seasons at age 30. Maybe Kreider can flirt with 35 goals per season instead of 30 going forward like a left-handed Joe Pavelski into his mid-30s. That said, New York is gonna need to find another 15–20 goals somewhere else across the lineup when Kreider does come back to earth next year.
The path is as wide open as it might get
The NHL playoffs are the highest variance of any in professional sports. The best team does not always win. In fact, the better regular-season team wins the least in the post-season of the four major North American sports leagues.
The randomness in hockey stems from the volume of variables on any given play. Screens, deflections, redirects, imperfections on the ice, bodies falling on a slippery surface, sticks breaking, blown coverages and a laundry list of other variables make hockey unpredictable.
The two heaviest favorites to win the Stanley Cup in the Eastern Conference are the Florida Panthers at +550 and Carolina Hurricanes at +1200. While both Florida and Carolina are strong teams, they don’t have a ton of separation from the rest of the conference.
The east is much more heavily condensed in terms of talent than the west. I’d argue that as many as seven teams could come out of the Eastern Conference whereas I could only envision three (Colorado, Calgary, and Minnesota) coming out of the west.
According to Hockeyviz.com’s playoff matchup tool, the Rangers will likely play the Pittsburgh Penguins or Boston Bruins in round 1. During the course of the 2021–2022 season, New York has a combined 5–2–0 record against those teams and both teams are currently dealing with injury problems to key contributors.
Most importantly, the Rangers are getting hot at the right time. While New York has definitely beat up on bad teams over the course of April, winning in convincing fashion is a good sign. The Rangers are 7–2–1 in their last ten games with four games remaining in the regular season.
The team’s strong play at a time when other teams in the eastern conference are dealing with injuries or struggles in performance is a welcome sign. If New York gets in playing strong out of the gate, it can likely win its first-round series in less than seven games.
However, this is all so tenuous.
The Rangers are a capped-out team for next season with about $11 million to fill out two top-six forward spots, a bottom-six forward spot, and a backup goalie. New York’s best offensive contributors are all having career years simultaneously and its goaltender just had one of the best goalie seasons in modern NHL history.
For all of those to happen at the same time is some genuine good fortune. If any team is going to win a championship, it’s going to require a whole lot of luck. New York can’t bank on all of these results aligning at the same time ever again, so it really has to be now or never for a group that has limited playoff experience.
