Rangers vs. Penguins: It's Only The First Game, Right?
It’s only one game, but the Rangers’ opener raised all the wrong questions. From slow legs to shaky defense, here's a break down of why Monday’s loss might be more than just a one-off, or might not.
- The timing of this has sort of worked that tonight Eric and I are going to record the podcast and I'm going to be able to give much more expanded thoughts on some of the pitfalls I see with this roster. Obviously Monday night's toothless 3-0 loss (two empty net goals) gave you plenty of reasons to be majorly concerned about this group, but there are also plenty of reasons to write it off as a one-off.
- Those write-off reasons? It was the first game of the regular season, really the first game for J.T. Miller and Artemi Panarin due to their preseason injuries, new coach, new system, new players (sort of).
- Then again ... the Penguins are bad, old, also have a new coach, also have a new system. And when you add it up like this, it's excuses.
- And beyond that, there seem to be bigger problems here. This team is slow. Like, really slow. Outside of the bottom six, Mika Zibanejad, and sometimes Alexis Lafrenière, there was literally no jump in the top six. And that says nothing about the defense, which we will get into.
