Podcast Ombudsman Report for Blueshirt Bandwidth Ep. 56
A packed Ombudsman Report: long playoff losses, what-ifs about Michael Sauer, the Necas contract twist, and why the Rangers still can’t finish.
Triple OT Game
Joe equated walking out of a watch party after losing an 18 inning World Series game with losing a long playoff overtime game. Toronto Blue Jays fans walked out of their watch party at almost 3 a.m. (ET), while when Rangers fans (such as myself) who were in attendance at game 1 of the 2022 first round against the Pittsburgh Penguins left after Evgeni Malkin scored the triple overtime winner walked out of MSG slightly before midnight.
Triple OT loss in the Stanley Cup Finals
Joe questioned whether you’d rather have just lost game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals in triple overtime to go down 2-1 or be where we are now. Teams that go down 2-1 in a best of 7 series come back and win approximately 30% of the time, while the New York Rangers currently have +3000 odds to win the cup, implying a slightly greater than 3% chance. Being down 2-1 in the Stanley Cup Finals would be the closest that the Rangers have been to winning a cup since I became a fan in 1997.
Number 56
Michael Sauer was a 23-year-old stud defenseman who was going to be a top four shutdown guy for years to come when Dion Phaneuf ended his career with a massive hit.
Joe mused about what the Rangers would have done had Sauer never been injured. They probably would not have given a 30-year-old Dan Girardi a 6 year, $33 million dollar deal that needed to be bought out only halfway through if they still had a better and three-years-younger Sauer.
Necas UFA
There was a back and forth about whether Martin Necas will be an RFA or UFA this offseason. He will be neither because hours after last week’s report went live, Necas made my beautiful table outdated by signing an 8 year extension with the Colorado Avalanche.
Lack of team speed
According to NHL Edge stats, the Rangers are squarely middle of the pack at best in tracked speed metrics:
- 20th in max skating speed (Noah Laba is the fastest Ranger)
- 15th in 22+ MPH skating bursts
- 14th in 20-22 MPH skating bursts
Team Shooting Percentages
Below is a table with the shooting percentage of each player on the Rangers this season along with their career shooting percentage and how far above or below their career shooting percentage they are. Red is bad (shooting below career average) and green is good (shooting above career average). As you can see, a lot of the Rangers big guns are shooting below their career average. We can hope that at least some of them start regressing to the mean and the puck begins to go in the net.
The Quit Period
Joe said that at this time last year, we were just about entering the quit period.
As of the recording of this podcast (daytime on October 28th), the Rangers had played 10 games with a record of 3-5-1.
The Rangers quit after game 17 last season. They had a 12-4-1 record following a 4-3 win in Vancouver on November 19th. The Rangers had the fifth most points in the Eastern Conference that day. The team subsequently went on an 4-15 stretch because Chris Drury was mean and wanted to trade players who he had the contractual right to trade.
Of course, since this episode was released, the Rangers have ripped off three consecutive wins that none of us were able to watch because we had fallen asleep or were watching literally the greatest baseball game of all time.
Rob O’Gara
Eric said that he was traded for Rick Nash. He was not traded for Rick Nash. As was written in last week’s Ombudsman report:
“He was acquired on Feb. 20, five days before Nash was dealt to Boston is a separate trade”
For the love of God Eric, please just read the words that I write and don’t dig yourself further into a hole.
Nick Mangold
In 2016, the late Nick Mangold took it upon himself to try to inspire a lifeless Rangers team by taunting the Penguins bench, who were lead by recently hired coach Mike Sullivan:
Highlights of Ombudsman Report
Eric introduced the ombudsman segment by saying that he would read the highlights of the Ombudsman Report. I’m not sure if Eric read the ombudsman report, especially the charts about past and future free agents, but there were no highlights. It is even worse now that Necas will not be hitting the market this offseason.
