New York Rangers Pathetic Showing Makes Us Less Worried About Lindy Ruff

Maybe Lindy Ruff wasn’t the problem with the New York Rangers defense.

New York Rangers fans were laughing at the New Jersey Devils when they announced they would be hiring Lindy Ruff as their new head coach. Ruff was the coach of the team’s defense, a unit that was downright awful. He clearly didn’t get more out of his defense, but the Rangers got basically the same output in a three-game sweep at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes.

Look at some of the advanced stats the Rangers put up at 5v5 in the three games, via Natural Stat Trick. They allowed 42 chances in Game 1 (in just 35 minutes at 5v5), 44 in Game 2, and 53 in Game 3. When everything was on the line, they couldn’t stop the Hurricanes as far as they could throw them.

It gets worse. When looking at high-danger chances, the Hurricanes had plenty of them on Henrik Lundqvist and Igor Shesterkin. They averaged 10 HDCF per game in the three games. The Rangers, on the other hand, only had a little under 7.

This is taking nothing away from the Hurricanes. They played a great series, but the Rangers just didn’t show up on defense. Tony DeAngelo was awful, and he was one of the players Rangers’ fans were touting for his major jump this season. He had a 35.71 CF%, which was worse than Marc Staal. It all culminated in this:

That was… not good. What’s worse is this was one of 12 high-danger chances his line allowed in the series. The Rangers only had two HDCF when he was on the ice at 5v5.

Adam Fox was at least good enough offensively to replace the sheer volume of chances he allowed, but he was nowhere near the player that had people calling for him to be a Calder Trophy candidate. Jacob Trouba was fine, but they didn’t make that trade to have him be “fine”. Ryan Lindgren didn’t have a good series. Brendan Smith was average at best.

This isn’t us saying we think Lindy Ruff is going to save the Devils defense. He isn’t. He made it clear this year he can’t get a bad defense to play well. However, it’s clear he wasn’t the problem in New York, and he won’t be the problem in New Jersey. They need more talent on the blue line for this to work with Ruff.

Our best-case scenario here is he unleashes P.K. Subban‘s offensive potential, fixes whatever was ailing Will Butcher, allows Ty Smith to thrive, and gets Damon Severson back to being one of the most promising second-pairing defensemen. We can’t expect him to make the Devils the Hurricanes with their current talent pool. The Devils need Tom Fitzgerald to use their cap space to get another defenseman this offseason. It’s crucial, or this rebuild really will be never-ending.