[text_output]– It doesn’t happen often, but I think it’s important for people to realize it happens: it’s possible for Drew and I to disagree! And we found a topic that put us against one another yesterday. Mika Zibanejad was an unexpected last-minute scratch for the Rangers last night, forcing David Desharnais into the line-up. Instead of the Rangers making some wholesale changes to their line-up, Alain Vigneault elected to simply plug and place. To me, nothing could’ve been more irresponsible, but you disagree.

Drew Way – Even the brightest minds in hockey disagree sometimes Greg (actually, they often disagree), and yes, on this particular topic, you and I find ourselves on the opposite end of the spectrum. Since I am in the unenviable position of defending Alain Vigneault, I just need to get one thing straight off the bat. I am NOT an AV apologist. Do not mistake me defending him on this one particular decision, as me defending him in general. I think Vigneault has made a number of lineup and personnel mistakes this season as well as last night. But inserting David Desharnais into the top line to replace Mika Zibanejad, who was a last-minute scratch, was not one of them.

Greg – So, in your mind, you’re saying the team was better off keeping the other 3 lines as they were for continuity sake and only shaking the chemistry of the KZB line?

Drew – More or less, yes. Let’s ignore the fourth line for a minute, because I think having Paul Carey play on it, who we know is not an NHL-caliber player, is a big mistake, and I’d MUCH rather give one of the kids in Hartford a shot to prove their worth. But, as far as the 2nd and 3rd lines are concerned, I believe it was the right move to not disrupt the chemistry we’ve seen with Nash and Hayes on the second line, and Miller and Zuccarello on the third line.

This was a play right out of Gregg Popovich’s playbook, whom for you non-basketball fans, is the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs and largely regarded as one of the best coaches in all of American sports. When Tony Parker gets injured, the team’s starting point guard, Popovich will often play the third string point guard (currently Dejounte Murray) in the starting lineup and keep Patty Mills on the bench unit. The reason for this is because the Spurs have a strong bench unit, and Popovich feels it is best for his team to not disrupt the chemistry of the bench unit in addition to the starters, which were disrupted by the initial injury.[/text_output][image type=”circle” float=”none” src=”1064″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””][text_output]Greg – I understand the idea in a vacuum. Why upset chemistry across the board for the sake of compensating for two forwards? Here’s my problem with it: AV was already shaking up the line-up going into the game. Vesey made the jump up to the Nash/Hayes line and Fast dropped back to play next to Boo Nieves. I get we’re talking about wingers there and not centers, but we’re already entering the game with some same faces in new places.

The bigger reason, though: we weren’t just talking about two forwards. We were talking about arguably the Rangers two most important forwards. The success of this team has largely relied on the play of the KZB line when in 5v5 situations (and that would once again be the case last night as it turned out), so why wouldn’t you always be concerned with putting Kreider and Buchnevich in advantageous situations? As well as David Desharnais looked after the first period last night, the fact of the matter is he was lost for 20 minutes of play to open the game, and stuck out like a sore thumb on the top power play unit when the Rangers given an odd man opportunity. I get the notion of not wanting to interrupt team chemistry, but team chemistry was already rocked with Zibanejad out of the line-up. How do you not adjust and compensate for that properly?

Drew – Well first, I think you made an important point when you said, ” I get we’re talking about wingers there and not centers.” I specifically originally stated that I did not want to disrupt the chemistry between Hayes and Nash, and Miller and Zuccarello on purpose. Kevin Hayes has been paired with Rick Nash a lot this year, and the underlying metrics show that line combination has been a success, and should not be messed with.

The line of Zuccarello-Hayes-Nash has logged 95 minutes during 5v5 so far this year, with a positive relative Corsi For % (0.95), and an expected goals for % of 54.55% (with a relative metric of +6.56). The combination with Vesey instead of Zucc has played just over 21 minutes in 5v5 play, and also features positive relative Corsi and expected goals metrics. The line with Fast on the wing of Hayes and Nash is a negative possession line, but also features a strong expected goals for % of 55.54% in 64 minutes of 5v5 play. The combination of Nash and Hayes works, and I don’t think it is worth it to mess with is just because inserting Hayes into the top line to replace Zibanejad may or may not increase your chances of winning one game (fingers crossed Zibanejad is only out one game). (note, all data is score adjusted)

Further, David Desharnais is not good defensively, and the Nash-Hayes duo has been used as the teams shutdown forward line. Desharnais is an offensive minded center, and he has been for most of his career. He had a couple years where he was fine in his own zone in Montreal, but I would argue that was more system and Carey Price driven then anything. He has been a decent playmaker for nearly his entire career however, and his skill set is suited to be fine with Kreider and Buchnevich.

He was awful in the first period, yes, but so was the entire team. In the second and third periods, that top line was excellent, and Desharnais made a number of key plays that led to him logging three assists on the night. The real issue at hand is, why the hell did Alain Vigneault play that line the least of any of the lines in 5v5 play. The reason the Rangers lost was not because of the top line, because it was their best line once again, even with DD. The issue was AV, in typical AV fashion, had mind-numbingly stupid line deployment logic, and the defensive pairing of Nick Holden and Brendan Smith was an absolute abomination.[/text_output][image type=”circle” float=”none” src=”1065″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””][text_output]Greg – I, too, wouldn’t have broken up Nash/Hayes at even strength. However, I don’t see a single reason why putting J.T. Miller between Kreider and Buchnevich wouldn’t work for a night. And if the fear is “well, we can’t leave Zuccarello on an island for the night”, there’s no reason not to then move Zucc back up to the Nash/Hayes line and let Jimmy Vesey play opposite Michael Grabner between either Desharnais or Nieves. It just felt to me that AV punted any hard decision about changing his line-up because he didn’t want to do all the tinkering. It felt like lazy coaching.

While I have gripes about not making shifts to the even strength lines, the real inexplicably horrendous decision was not adjusting the power play unit. It has long been one of my top three Rangers/AV gripes this year that the team continues to leave Kevin Hayes off either power play unit. There’s no tangible reason for it, even when everyone is healthy. But last night provided an opportunity to get both J.T. Miller and Kevin Hayes extended looks on the man advantage and see if either can flourish in an increased role. Simply plugging Desharnais in to the first line basically neutered the productivity of the Rangers most successful unit. We’ve seen Desharnais on the power play this year. It hasn’t worked. What in gods name made AV think it would work last night beyond the “well, he needs to be Mika tonight, so I’m not going to tinker with anything and just hope it works”?

Drew – (Greg, give me a couple minutes need to pull up something to answer the Miller part, but then we will find common ground because i agree on the PP deployment).

Greg – I’m including this part in the article, Drew! Once we start, you can’t just call timeout! THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS!

Drew – LMAO FINE!

Those are all good points, and I for the most part agree. But, I believe that it would’ve done more damage to the team to shake up the second and third lines, particularly the second line, for the hopes of making the first line better, than simply doing what AV did last night and leaving the middle lines alone and plugging DD in at the top. The way I look at it is, lets call KZB and A line, and lets for the sake of argument, call the Hayes-Nash line and Miller-Zuccarello line B lines (using standard A-F school grading). The way I view it is, plugging in DD for Zibanejad lowers that top line to a B, but we are still maintaining the Bs in lines 2 and 3. However, If you, for arguments sake, put Miller on the top line and DD and the third, I think the top line is still a B+ at best, and not an A, but we are now dropping the third line from a B to a C. Long story short, I don’t think the net-gain of moving Miller or Hayes to the top is worth disrupting the middle lines for a game.

The first period last night was a complete abomination, and all of the worst case scenarios played out for the offense, defense and Lundqvist. However, the second and third periods played out well (offensively at least, as I said before Smith and Holden were atrocious), and I think the team showed that as long as you stick a guy that can pass the puck and skate well (which DD most certainly can) with Buchnevich and Kreider, you will be fine.

One last point I would like to make is that, most Ranger fans, both you and myself included, need to stop worrying so much about the on paper designations of first, second and third line. While I do not agree with the deployment decisions, fact of the matter is AV rolls the top-3 lines relatively equally in terms of 5v5 TOI, and so the designations really only matter on paper. Given this, we should really be thinking about the team as the top-9 and the fourth line. The importance isn’t who is on the top line as far as “well player X is better than player y, therefor X should be on the top line.”

They are all getting relatively equal minutes, so it doesn’t matter. What we need to focus on is whether or not the combinations of talent make sense, and if the players on each line have skill sets to complement one another. While it certainly is less than ideal to have DD on the top line, and the Rangers season is completely screwed if Zibanejad is out long-term, having a quick, decent passer in between Buchnevich and Kreider is fine, and was the least of the team’s worries last night.[/text_output][image type=”thumbnail” float=”none” src=”1066″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””][text_output]Greg – Your last point we both agree with. I said on a recent pod (and credit to Tobias Pettersson for really opening my eyes to it) that the Rangers play with a top 9 vs. playing with specified top 3 lines. For the most part, everyone usually sees the same amount of ice time (again with the exception of Pavel Buchnevich for…reasons).

And you’re right. The Rangers main problem last night was not putting Desharnais between Buch and Kreider (though the problem of not giving Kevin Hayes power play time EVEN WHEN Mika is out remains a major issue). The major problem was defense, most notably Steve Kampfer decent into the abyss and Nick Holden reverting back to his 2016-17 form. But Alain Vigneault continually gets challenged with seemingly minor decisions that, when properly addressed, could have wide-ranging impacts on this team, and each time he either declines to address the challenge or fail miserably with how he chooses to handle it. It’s almost as if this team would be better off if they had a different head coach leading them.

Drew – That we can both agree on my friend. I can go on about how AV is your average NHL coach and that I don’t think he’s as bad as NYR fans like to act (I’ve literally seen numerous people call him the worst coach in hockey, which is just being ignorant to what’s going on with many other teams). That said, I’ve long been of the belief, just as you, that AV is not the right coach for this team.

Greg – Sounds like you love AV.

Drew -[/text_output][image type=”thumbnail” float=”none” src=”1067″ alt=”” href=”” title=”” info_content=”” lightbox_caption=”” id=”” class=”aligncenter” style=””]