The New York Rangers are searching for an identity and facing lots of questions
Daily Faceoff: David Pagnotta was asked about the New York Rangers and their early-season struggles. They aren’t going to rebuild if things don’t go well, but could go through a retool as they look to find their identity. Which direction will they ultimately look to go in?
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Colby Cohen: “And I want to stay in the metro with you, and I hope, I hope Johnny’s watching, because I want to talk to you about the New York Rangers and the issue that they’re having. You know, we spent a good amount of time this morning talking about Brennan Othmann and why the New York Rangers aren’t just going to let this guy go. I mean it, which, again, like makes sense to me. Why are you going to let him walk out the door, potentially, go have success somewhere else, and then you look like a fool, unless there’s a big name guy coming back the other way?
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But like, I look at Will Culley, and I look at (Alexis) Laferniere’s on the wing, and I think about their goal-scoring struggle. It’s like, what is Chris Drury gonna do because you didn’t bring Mike Sullivan in to be an okay team? You paid him a ton of money. Now you got to give him the weapons to go out and be a competitive team. And right now, they just can’t score enough to really compete at the high enough level.
Pagnotta: “Yeah, no, I agree with you. There’s, the struggles there are real. And it’s, it’s, they just don’t know what they’re, look this is used all the time now, but they don’t know their identity. They’re trying to find what their identity really is. Everybody’s utilizing that term right now, but in their case, it’s totally valid. They, they, they’re in flux.
And you know, with a guy like (Artemi) Panarin, who’s a UFA at the end of the year, with whatever direction this team is eventually going in, they have to make an internal decision as to what they want to do with them. Do you go out and try to, try to hold on to them and add additional pieces? Can you this season? Or do you move him out, bring in young assets, bring in additional pieces? And this will be something later in the season anyway.
But try to, try to retool on the fly, like this is not a team that’s going to go through a quasi-rebuild like they did a number of years ago, where they kind of faked it. Ended up getting Lafreniere first overall, and then decided to keep adding.
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Like this is a team that’s going to have to be in a position where they got to, it’s a retool. So, depending on how this season goes, you know, is (Mika) Zibanejad going to be able to step up even more this season? Is Panarin? Are there other pieces on this club? How’s the, how’s (Igor) Shesterkin going to do with some of the guys in front of him? Is he going to be able to bail them out in certain circumstances?
Like this is a team that, as you said, struggling to score. Can other pieces on this club step up in order to push them a little bit forward? Can they get into a consistent discussion of playoff contention?
And if not, then, yeah. Chris Drury has some serious questions that need to be answered. Do you go big fish hunting again in a different sense, and look to make significant hockey-type, blockbuster-esque moves by moving out key pieces in order to bring in additional key pieces, or other key pieces?
It’s a tricky situation for the Rangers, because, you’re right, they brought in Mike Sullivan to help push this team forward. Like with that ownership as well, it’s just barking down at them, like, fill up the building, get into contention, get us back into contender status, and push for for top spot, you know, in the Metro. It’s, it’s a big task.
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They don’t know what they’re, I don’t like, I don’t, management I don’t think knows exactly what they’ve got either. So there’s a lot of different internal struggling that they need to do in terms of just visualizing exactly what path they want to take before they start making moves. Like they’ve got some on paper, some, some pieces there, boys, but it’s just not gelling still.
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