2025 Rangers Season Previews: Adam Fox

Adam Fox is an elite NHL defenseman.

If you're the kind of person who has an adverse reaction to that sentence, causing you to go into conniption fits, thrashing about wildly, muttering to yourself about his deployment in the final game of an in-season mini-tournament that replaced the NHL All Star Game as if it is the smoking-gun evidence of Fox's insufficiency at hockey, then maybe you should just skip this piece in our 2025 Season Previews series. After all, life is short, health care is expensive, and I don't need to be responsible in any way for someone being hauled away screaming clearly insane things like, "get these squirrels off me," or "California really does have the best pizza," or "Adam Fox is not elite." I don't need that on my conscience.

That a player as gifted as Adam Fox has become the source of such unnecessary, unreleting, and unjustified derision and swirling ingratitude across parts of this fanbase is inexplicable to the level where you maybe need to just shrug and say, "this is why we can't have nice things in New York." That's essentially what Joe said on the podcast.

But Fox is elite.

By some appearances, last season was not Fox's best—just as it was not the best for anyone on the Rangers and, in many cases, was among the worst seasons of their respective careers. Believe it or not, elite players can have down years, too (without it affecting their overall elite status). However, his performance, while still recovering from injury and for most of the season hauling around the corpse of Ryan Lindgren as his defensive partner, was good enough that Tom Urtz, Jr. argued he should be in consideration for the Norris Trophy.

Now, with the acquisition of a defensive partner worthy of having Fox's flank in Vladislav Gavrikov, and a new head coach in Mike Sullivan who will presumably implement a defensive system in New York that isn't an epic disaster, what can we expect from Fox?

Previous Performance

When you have receipts, you bring the receipts. Here they are on Adam Fox:

As JFresh said in one of the tweets above, the only way in which Fox's season wasn't "up to standard" is that "he scored a few fewer goals and the team around him sucked more." The latter part of that diagnosis is undeniably true. The Rangers were a dumpster fire on defense, starting with Peter Laviolette's man-on-man system that the defensive personnel seemed incapable of handling, and which the forward group was incapable of supporting.

Add to that Fox having to carry Ryan Lindgren for the majority of the year. If you're one of the people who only want to remember Lindgren fondly, you might want to avert your eyes:

Once up on a time, Ryan Lindgren was a solid NHL defenseman. But his play style has taken a toll on him, and it's undeniable now that he was an anchor weighing down Adam Fox over the last few years. We see this, in part, just by comparing the Fox/Lindgren pairing to the results of the two partners Fox spent spent the next most time with.

Fox/Lindgren posted a 50.02 xGF% in just over 611 minute together, according to NaturalStatTrick. Considering just how bad Lindgren was, that's remarkable in its own right. When paired with K'Andre Miller, however, they skated to the tune of a 64.69 xGF% in 314 minutes together. After the trade deadline when Fox played most of his minutes with Carson Soucy they amassed a 63.28 xGF% in 146 minutes together. I hasten to remind you all that neither Miller nor Soucy played particularly great last year. That should drive home just how much of a handicap it was deploying Ryan Lindgren with Adam Fox, and just how incredibly resilient Fox is.

I think this also dovetails nicely with what I believe is the major disconnect between people who (correctly) believe Adam Fox is one of the best defensemen in the NHL and those who don't: play style.

Reread JFresh's description of Ryan Lindgren from one of the tweets above: He's "pretty mobile, he plays bigger than his frame, he blocks shots, he kills penalties." He plays a style of hockey you notice. Hell, for a while there, it wasn't really a New York Rangers game until Lindgren was bleeding.

Ultimately I think a lot of people who bristle at Fox being described as elite are having a different conversation. I'll let Chip explicate from a recent comment he made:

Statement 1: “I’m not a huge fan of the way Adam Fox plays. I prefer players who are faster and more physical on D”

Statement 2: “Adam Fox is not an elite defenseman”

Statement 1 is an opinion that anyone is welcome to have. There’s really no right or wrong to it. No statistical evidence that one can point to and say “no, you have to like cerebral players.” If playing at high speed and throwing the body is your jam then it is understandable why Adam Fox may not be your favorite player.

Statement 2 is something different. There are actual evidentiary markers to point to and say, “nope, you’re wrong” and if you choose to still hold to the belief that Fox isn’t elite in the face of contradictory evidence, then yeah, you deserve mocking and derision as much as a Flat Earther does.

This, to me, gets to the crux of the problem with the "eye test." We've known for years about the fallibility of things like eye witness testimony. We know how humans can convince ourselves to see what we want to see. This isn't to say that there's no point in watching the games. I'm not here advocating for enjoying the sport only through the sweeping vistas of an Excel spreadsheet. But at some point, if all the available metrics measuring Fox's performance are saying he's among the best in hockey, and you think it's problematic that the eye test seems to go in a different direction for you than the charts, then I think you have to conclude that it is problematic ... for the eye test.

If the statistical models were mixed on Fox's performance, that would be one thing. But when they're all pointing in one direction and what you think you see is entirely in the other direction, it's time to consider if either your eyes are deceiving you or if what you're really saying is that you don't like Fox's style of play irrespective of if it's effective. It's fine to feel that way. You can wish Fox was bigger, stronger, and faster. You can wish he skated like Cale Makar. You can wish he threw the body like Jacob Trouba. But in spite of whatever seeming physical limitations Fox has, his performance is still nonetheless among the best of NHL defensemen.

Expectations

As mentioned before, the key to our expectations for Adam Fox this season rests in no small part on a player who is not Adam Fox. That man is Vladislav Gavrikov:

Just go back and quickly compare that player card to the Ryan Lindgren one a little further up.

For the first time in several seasons, Fox's defensive partner will be neither a perpetual defensive liability nor a complete offensive blackhole. This should be freeing for Fox to know he doesn't need to worry if his other half has things covered. Also, for the people who are concerned about size, Gavrikov is 6-3 and weighs in at 220 pounds. Again, Fox is effective despite being only 5-11 and 180 pounds. But, even while the similarly diminutive Lindgren played bigger than his size, Gavrikov's heft should nonetheless help, as he can handle the lion's share of the dirty work.

Fox should similarly benefit this year from a couple of other changes that will come along with a new head coach in Mike Sullivan.

For one, the team will ditch Peter Laviolette's disastrous man-to-man defensive scheme for a zone defense. While we should always hesitate before saying "it can't get worse," well, it would be hard to get much worse than what we saw last year under the Laviolette system.

Similarly, we can expect a different look and different personnel group on the power play. At one point in time, at its peak effectiveness, you could seemingly count on about a point per night from Fox on the power play (you sports bettors out there know what I'm talking about). But over time the power play got stale and predictable, as most clearly evidenced by Mika Zibanejad going from being deadly on the one-timer from the face off circle to that play being a complete non-factor. The changes here will be welcome.

Predictions

Fox should silence some of the critics this year, if indeed their complaints aren't just about his style of play as opposed to the results.

Last year in Los Angeles, Gavrikov spent most of his time paired with Mikey Anderson. Anderson is a solid defenseman, to be sure, and far more oriented towards shut-down defense than Fox. But I think even Fox's biggest detractors would admit that Fox is the superior of the two—I've seen long lists of the defensemen in the league who are supposedly better than Fox and have yet to see Anderson's name included. In 839 minutes together for the Kings, the Gavrikov/Anderson pair posted a 56.01 xGF%. That was good for eighth best in the league for defensive pairings with at least 500 minutes together. I see absolutely no reason the Fox/Gavrikov pairing can't be at least that good if not better, and in the top five pairings in the league for expected goal share.

For his stat line, look for something around 15 goals and 65 assists for 80 points. A reinvigorated power play will go a long way to increasing Fox's point total over last year's 61. Fox's 18 points on the power play last year was the lowest number he's posted in a full season after his rookie year. Just a regression to the mean would probably mean another 10 points alone on the power play.

Finally, expect Fox to be in the Norris conversation. As previously noted, Fox has finished in the top five in Norris voting four times in six seasons. With the combination of a new and very capable defensive partner, a new coach, and a new system, Fox should return to serious, legitimate contention for the trophy he's already won once.

The New York Rangers are blessed to have one of the best defensemen in the National Hockey League on their roster, even if some people are committed to neither seeing it or appreciating it. My biggest expectation regarding Fox this year is that more people will come around to this reality.

So, don't let me down. It would be really great if we could have nice things again.