2021-22 NYR Season Preview

[Blue Heaven]

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The Metropolitan Division log jam continues with a team that likely would’ve rated much higher if not for a strange offseason where the team went out of its way to get worse.

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That becomes more difficult now after a ‘tough to play against’ mandate infiltrated the team’s brain trust, lessening the team’s chances of success. New York should still take a step forward this season towards becoming a playoff team, the problem is the Rangers could’ve been something more than that. Much more.

New York Rangers 2021-22 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings 

https://theathletic.com/2852786/2021/10/03/new-york-rangers-2021-22-season-preview-playoff-chances-projected-points-roster-rankings/?source=user_shared_article

Edited October 4, 2021 by Blue Heaven
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[Flynn]

I've been on record for not thinking the world of Dom's methodologies. There is a lot of good info to digest in this piece, but I still don't think he considers the full panorama of what makes a great hockey team. 

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They didn’t have to hand Barclay Goodrow a huge deal. They didn’t have to trade for Ryan Reaves. And they certainly didn’t have to move Pavel Buchnevich. That last one is what stings most and it’s what mostly drives the team to be 1.5 wins worse off. 

1. The Goodrow deal can be debated, but is by absolutely no means "huge"- 4.5% of the cap for a 3rd liner who played 18:15, and 17:05 in the playoffs for the back to back champs. The hyperbole around how bad this deal is is just silly. If the 21.6/6 if the biggest problem this salary cap has, we are in wonderful fucking shape. 

2. Reaves- Time will tell. The extension is a big question mark, but again- we are talking 2.12% of the cap.  The egregious financial moves for the Rangers are tying up 6.6% of the cap.. my biggest bitch with his models is it's difficult to put a metric on "hard to play against".  

3. The Buchnevich deal- for a dude so plugged into the pulse of the league and the analytical aspects that make it tick- he sure as shit ignored the financial issues that made dealing Buch almost a required offseason move- he didn't fit from a cash perspective, and his move was needed to clear a spot for the youth movement. The argument about the return is a fair and reasonable one to make ((he chose not to tackle that concept), but to say they "certainly didn't need to move" is void of any reason. 

  

[siddious]

I can’t even finish reading this article. This is a perfect example why analytics should only be a part of ones analysis and not what you base your team/story on. 
 

I don’t even think his projection for where this team will be in the standings is all that wrong but how he got there and how he justifies it don’t work for me. 

[Pete]

2 minutes ago, siddious said:

I can’t even finish reading this article. This is a perfect example why analytics should only be a part of ones analysis and not what you base your team/story on. 
 

I don’t even think his projection for where this team will be in the standings is all that wrong but how he got there and how he justifies it don’t work for me. 

As soon as I saw who wrote it, I clicked out. He's insufferable, and the way Shayna just parrots his "adjusted game score" to form her opinion, as if it was a real stat...makes her a must-skip, too. 

[siddious]

1 minute ago, Pete said:

As soon as I saw who wrote it, I clicked out. He's insufferable, and the way Shayna just parrots his "adjusted game score" to form her opinion, as if it was a real stat...makes her a must-skip, too. 

Can’t even fucking say his name and I’m Polish

[BlairBettsBlocksEverything]

23 minutes ago, Flynn said:

I've been on record for not thinking the world of Dom's methodologies. There is a lot of good info to digest in this piece, but I still don't think he considers the full panorama of what makes a great hockey team. 

1. The Goodrow deal can be debated, but is by absolutely no means "huge"- 4.5% of the cap for a 3rd liner who played 18:15, and 17:05 in the playoffs for the back to back champs. The hyperbole around how bad this deal is is just silly. If the 21.6/6 if the biggest problem this salary cap has, we are in wonderful fucking shape. 

2. Reaves- Time will tell. The extension is a big question mark, but again- we are talking 2.12% of the cap.  The egregious financial moves for the Rangers are tying up 6.6% of the cap.. my biggest bitch with his models is it's difficult to put a metric on "hard to play against".  

3. The Buchnevich deal- for a dude so plugged into the pulse of the league and the analytical aspects that make it tick- he sure as shit ignored the financial issues that made dealing Buch almost a required offseason move- he didn't fit from a cash perspective, and his move was needed to clear a spot for the youth movement. The argument about the return is a fair and reasonable one to make ((he chose not to tackle that concept), but to say they "certainly didn't need to move" is void of any reason. 

  

Cap wise you are absolutely right. I kinda hate that its 6 years. but that's a problem for years 4-5-6 of that deal. Won't matter in the immediate term

In 3-4 years, when the cap has inevitably gone up, I'm sure there will be some bottom feeder that will take a draft pick to take the contract off our hands. Even with some retained, that will be such a miniscule number of our cap space that it won't be a big deal

[Ozzy]

I gotta say honestly, fellas....I get more insight from you guys than people like this.  We were talking about Buch being a casualty before last season even started.  Not only that but the need for grit was a season long topic.

I don't agree with any of his points, and to tell you the truth, I'd rather go off some of the opinions of the guys in this crew we have here.

 

Shit!!!  Why do you think Uncle Larry visits as often as he does?  He knows the deal!!  LOL

[Bugg]

56 minutes ago, siddious said:

I can’t even finish reading this article. This is a perfect example why analytics should only be a part of ones analysis and not what you base your team/story on. 
 

I don’t even think his projection for where this team will be in the standings is all that wrong but how he got there and how he justifies it don’t work for me. 

There's only so much ice time, and you have to give it to the guys who are either being paid be the big guys  or  becoming your core as they get experienced or both. If Kakko and Laffy work out, there's no way to justify paying Buch to get 3rd line minutes what he could expect to be paid. 

[siddious]

15 minutes ago, Bugg said:

There's only so much ice time, and you have to give it to the guys who are either being paid be the big guys  or  becoming your core as they get experienced or both. If Kakko and Laffy work out, there's no way to justify paying Buch to get 3rd line minutes what he could expect to be paid. 

Not only that but both Kakko and Laf's ceilings are higher. There may be growing pains but playing Buch over them would only hinder them more. You didnt have to trade him, but you kind of had to trade him. 

[Ozzy]

1 minute ago, siddious said:

Not only that but both Kakko and Laf's ceilings are higher. There may be growing pains but playing Buch over them would only hinder them more. You didnt have to trade him, but you kind of had to trade him. 

I honestly think we did what we were supposed to do this offseason.  I don't think last season's team, even if they made the playoffs, had any chance at all of making any noise. 

[Cash or Czech]

1 hour ago, Pete said:

As soon as I saw who wrote it, I clicked out. He's insufferable, and the way Shayna just parrots his "adjusted game score" to form her opinion, as if it was a real stat...makes her a must-skip, too. 

I don't think they have a single good writer who writes about the Rangers tbh. Which is sad for a premium, paid media outlet.

[Patrick Bateman]

Is there a more arrogant hockey writer out there right now?

[siddious]

5 minutes ago, Xander said:

I don't think they have a single good writer who writes about the Rangers tbh. Which is sad for a premium, paid media outlet.

Yea Carp was never great but even the quality of his articles has significantly gone down in the last season or two.

Vince Mercogliano is about the only Rangers beat writer worth paying attention to these days. His podcast is pretty dry but insightful. Shout out to @shestYORKin who had a question answered by vince on the last episode (unless someone is using your name)

[Zuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc]

Is this written by Buch’s dad?

«went out of its way to get worse» lmao. Traded 1 guy who was a regular last season and he was probably the 5-6th most talented winger on the roster.

[Drew a Penalty]

4 minutes ago, siddious said:

Yea Carp was never great but even the quality of his articles has significantly gone down in the last season or two.

Vince Mercogliano is about the only Rangers beat writer worth paying attention to these days. His podcast is pretty dry but insightful. Shout out to @shestYORKin who had a question answered by vince on the last episode (unless someone is using your name)

Carp is fucking garbage. He made an attempt when he first started with the Athletic by covering the Pack and has gotten lazier and lazier since.

Vince is awesome, Mollie Walker is great but she works all three beats, and Colin Stephenson is underrated. I think they all do a better job of providing extra content that others have lacked over the years. I just don't think any of them ever have particularly interesting takes.

[LindG1000]

2 hours ago, Flynn said:

I've been on record for not thinking the world of Dom's methodologies. There is a lot of good info to digest in this piece, but I still don't think he considers the full panorama of what makes a great hockey team. 

1. The Goodrow deal can be debated, but is by absolutely no means "huge"- 4.5% of the cap for a 3rd liner who played 18:15, and 17:05 in the playoffs for the back to back champs. The hyperbole around how bad this deal is is just silly. If the 21.6/6 if the biggest problem this salary cap has, we are in wonderful fucking shape. 

2. Reaves- Time will tell. The extension is a big question mark, but again- we are talking 2.12% of the cap.  The egregious financial moves for the Rangers are tying up 6.6% of the cap.. my biggest bitch with his models is it's difficult to put a metric on "hard to play against".  

3. The Buchnevich deal- for a dude so plugged into the pulse of the league and the analytical aspects that make it tick- he sure as shit ignored the financial issues that made dealing Buch almost a required offseason move- he didn't fit from a cash perspective, and his move was needed to clear a spot for the youth movement. The argument about the return is a fair and reasonable one to make ((he chose not to tackle that concept), but to say they "certainly didn't need to move" is void of any reason. 

  

The sum total of all of this is "the Rangers would be a better team with Buchnevich and non-replacement fourth liners". Which is probably right, aside from the fact that I don't really think Rooney, Blais, Barron, or Reaves are your run-of-the-mill 4th liners. 

We act like these are shocking takes - they're not really. 

[Pete]

6 minutes ago, G1000 said:

The sum total of all of this is "the Rangers would be a better team with Buchnevich and non-replacement fourth liners". Which is probably right, aside from the fact that I don't really think Rooney, Blais, Barron, or Reaves are your run-of-the-mill 4th liners. 

We act like these are shocking takes - they're not really. 

They're not shocking from Dom, they're just his normal bad ones.

[siddious]

10 minutes ago, G1000 said:

The sum total of all of this is "the Rangers would be a better team with Buchnevich and non-replacement fourth liners". Which is probably right, aside from the fact that I don't really think Rooney, Blais, Barron, or Reaves are your run-of-the-mill 4th liners. 

We act like these are shocking takes - they're not really. 

No one is shocked, we just think hes wrong. I'm not saying the rangers have a top 4th line but they certainly have a much better one than last season. Buch's #'s may not get replaced but who ever ends up being that 1RW will certainly see a spike in production. Not to mention the defense is slightly improved. It's a better over-all team.

[LindG1000]

2 minutes ago, siddious said:

No one is shocked, we just think hes wrong. I'm not saying the rangers have a top 4th line but they certainly have a much better one than last season. Buch's #'s may not get replaced but who ever ends up being that 1RW will certainly see a spike in production. Not to mention the defense is slightly improved. It's a better over-all team.

He's objectively right to point out that losing Buchnevich isn't offset by the lot of them. He's literally saying the same shit half our fanbase was saying for the entire summer before Reaves won them over with his charm, swag, and massive forearms.

The piece I'm honestly surprised by is that he didn't mention that while Goodrow, Rooney, and Blais combine to basically "not move the needle" - they're a marked improvement over Howden, DiGiuseppe, and Gauthier - all of whom would be rather serious negatives in his world. 

[Keirik]

Our grinding type line is a massive improvement over last year but we are very much banking on a leap from Alf and Kakko to replace Buchs offense. In reality we need an improvement on what Buch did by at least one of those two being impactful while the other makes up the difference for an increase. 

[Morphinity 2.0]

It's the same song and dance with almost all of these statistics-based writers. If it can't be measured or quantified via publicly available methods, they're not interested. 

I'm not sure how much I really disagree with his overall main idea though - the team will be good-ish, they'll probably be right on the bubble, and they probably could have been a little better but they'll be tougher to play against than last season. Nothing wrong with all of that. 

[Pete]

14 minutes ago, G1000 said:

He's objectively right to point out that losing Buchnevich isn't offset by the lot of them.

Except he's wrong because no one expected those three to replace Buch's numbers. That will be a mix of Chytil, Kravtsov, Laf and Kakko.

Look, this line tells me everything I need to know about this idiot:

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This model projected the team to finish with 59.9 points and they delivered exactly as expected with 60 points.

Did it, Dom? Did it predict that Panarin would miss a month, Zib would miss half a season as a long-hauler, ADA would be gone, Shesty, Chytil, Trouba, Krieder and Kakko would all miss time with injury and COVID?

He's an arrogant prick.

[siddious]

14 minutes ago, Keirik said:

Our grinding type line is a massive improvement over last year but we are very much banking on a leap from Alf and Kakko to replace Buchs offense. In reality we need an improvement on what Buch did by at least one of those two being impactful while the other makes up the difference for an increase. 

I don’t think anyone of them will replicate buch’s production but I do expect at least kakko and laf to improve enough to over come some of that. Not to mention that 4th line again which obviously won’t score a lot but will probably be a much more reliable line over all. And again the defense should be improved this year on both sides of the puck 

[Keirik]

1 minute ago, siddious said:

I don’t think anyone of them will replicate buch’s production but I do expect at least kakko and laf to improve enough to over come some of that. Not to mention that 4th line again which obviously won’t score a lot but will probably be a much more reliable line over all. And again the defense should be improved this year on both sides of the puck 

I'm not really thinking either will flat out bang on replace Buch 65 point projection or whatever it was but I think a key to any success is figuring a kakko does like a 45 point season while Alf does a 35 or so to replace and add a bit more. Something along those stats. Add in Krav as well. 

[lefty9]

I think we need to see improvement out of our young core ,no excuses these guys have to improve this season ,you expect it from  a number one and number two overall  picks,plus kravtsov,Chytil need to play up  to their  expectations