Are the New York Rangers Missing an Identity? | NHL on TNT

But let’s go back here. December 2022. Remember Rangers season seem to be slipping a little bit. Jacob Trouba goes out there. The captain gets nasty. He’s hitting. He’s scrapping. Smashes the helmet. Tells his team to wake up. They did this year. Rangers struggling. Getting outshot terribly by this Detroit team that beat them. Mason Appleton shoots it right at the buzzer. Goes in the empty net. Jonathan Quick has had enough. He worked hard in that game. He comes off the bench. Little bit of a scuffle ensues there, but they lost three straight after that one. They’ve won two in a row since then. Remember in 2022 they went on a sevengame winning streak. So you look at the captain here and coach, I’ll start with you. You’re looking for an identity. You’re looking for a mindset. Does this Rangers team this year have one? Do you think? I think they do. And and listen, I I coached Sully in Phoenix for a while and and I love the guy. He had coach written all over him as a player. You heard him talk about changing their identity and becoming harder to play against. Their version of being harder to play against was tighten it up defensively. Now they are fourth in the league at goals against. When you have that, you have something to build on every game. Yeah, the the goal scoring wasn’t there early. That’s going to come. There’s too much talent in that locker room for it not to come. The first thing he had to do was tighten it up and give them a good chance to win every game. You play good team D in our league, you have a good chance to win every game. The goals will come. Now you’ve got JT Miller as your captain. They missed him. you got Troj back. They help with that identity and being hard to play against because they’re nasty. They’re they’re hard to play against and they’re going to drag all these other guys back into the fight, right? So, when you do that, then the goals against we’re the goals for are going to come. But I absolutely love what Jonathan Quick did. Like, okay, the coach wants us to have an identity. The coach wants us to play harder against these guys are coming to our rink and they doing that. I’m not taking that. So, I loved what he did. He’s not the biggest guy, right? but he’s the first guy off the bench and he goes right at him and now you’re dragging other guys into the fight. I was kind of shocked and a little disappointed that they went on that road trip and lost three games. I said because every game, every team when you’re not winning, something’s got to catapult you to get you going again. I kind of figured that was the the uh mission to light the fire. It didn’t happen. But now they’ve come back and won two games. But I love seeing that stuff when the players come off the bench and the passion. That’s great. That’s what makes our game great. No, he I mean he’s got a quick whit, no pun intended. Did it Did it concern you a little bit that it had to be the goalender to do it or just because it all went down so fast, you’re like, “Ah, it doesn’t matter.” He’s the goalie. That’s his net. That’s my net. You’re not doing that to my net. I love that. I thought it was great. And I was going to go back to Sully like I felt like uh he stayed very calm early in the year despite only scoring six goals in the first seven home games and really off to a rough start, but he was very complimentary of the process, not necessarily the result. So, as a head coach, is that kind of where your mind frame is where if your guys are playing well and and they’re playing your system yet the results not there? Do you try to stay even keel and be patient? Because though that process started last summer, it it just didn’t start in game one. It started last summer when he took the job and he had his meetings with his players, his conversations with his players. Everything was probably geared towards playing defensively. Now you go into training camp, all your meetings, all your all your practices, everything’s s geared up to play better team defense. Now it leads into the season and you’re playing great defensively. Yeah, you’re not scoring, but then you’ve got to believe, okay, we’re doing a lot of good things here. That process is going to take care of itself. We look in the locker room. Yeah, there’s goal scorers here. So, we’re you can’t sometimes you can’t explain that. How do they not score? You can’t. But I early in the year I watched the first couple games, they didn’t score. The third game I watched, all of a sudden goal scorers who usually pick corners, they’re shooting at pads. They’re shooting in the middle of the net. They just wanted to hit the net. So once you get past that and you start scoring goals, the goals are going to come. That’s a good team. Sully’s a great coach. He’s got a good staff. They’ve got the nuclear down of how to play the game the right way and they’re going to be okay. I think it’s easy for a coach like Sully Bones to go out there and preach that message and have the guys buy in because he’s got that added credibility. He could throw those Stanley Cup rings in the table and he could say, “Hey, I got Sydney Crosby. I got a Vinnie Malcin. I got these guys to buy in. You guys need to buy in too because this is what success looks like.” And and then back to your point about Jonathan Quick. You know, the Rangers have been brutal at home. So, I felt like when I was watching that player, watching that kind of happen, he’s saying we’re taking back home ice cuz it’s been way too easy for teams to come into MSG, which is one of the best buildings in the NHL to play in. And teams come in there and just been slapping the Rangers around. They haven’t been scoring. So, now Quickie is saying, “You know what? We might have lost this game, but I’m taking my pound of flesh. Yeah. And he was It felt bigger than just the moment, didn’t it?

Former NHL Head Coach Rick Bowness joins Biz, Ace, and Liam on the NHL on TNT pregame show to discuss the New York Rangers, and if they have an identity this season.

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