You’d like the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts. Realistically, though, the Rangers’ power play is exactly the sum of its parts, which is the best explanation available for why they have gone 1-for-10 in 17:07 with the man-advantage in the past three games and 2-for-23 in 39:51 over the past seven contests.
When guys struggle at even-strength, rarely is there a dichotomy as to how they perform on power plays. So until Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, and lately, Pavel Buchnevich, take a step up, one of the Rangers’ greatest projected assets going into the season will remain more of a liability.
“I do believe that usually when your power play is struggling, it might be a microcosm of some of the guys on it not playing well at five-on-five or struggling five-on-five,” said coach David Quinn, whose Rangers will host the Bruins at the Garden on Wednesday for the first of a two-game set. “I think there’s a little bit of a carryover there and a frustration level that happens on a power play.
“When you get highly skilled guys, sometimes they change their approach. Sometimes they, you know, I call it play[ing] power play instead of hockey within a power play and I think that’s kind of happening to us right now. We’re just a little bit too methodical, we’re too slow, too predictable and I think we’re overthinking it.”
A year ago, the power play thundered down the stretch at a nearly 30 percent rate (29-for-99) after Christmas. But Tony DeAngelo, rather than Adam Fox, ran the first unit. Perhaps there is a learning curve going from the more dynamic and mercurial DeAngelo to the more cerebral and steady Fox. Perhaps not.
“Not really,” Quinn said when presented with that hypothesis. “I think Foxy and Tony bring similar qualities to that power play, I really do.
“Both of them are not heavy shooters, both of them have good patience, both of them can slow it down, maybe to a detriment on the power play, and both of them have great hockey IQs. So they’re very similar in their approach. So I don’t think that’s been much of an issue.”
Quinn then correctly pointed out that the power play had initially operated efficiently and productively after Fox replaced DeAngelo on the first unit following the season opener. Indeed, the Blueshirts went 4-for-18 in the first three games with Fox at the helm.
“Early on, I thought that power play with Foxy on it was very good, and was good even though they may not have been scoring,” Quinn said. “Lately, we haven’t been scoring and we haven’t looked good on it, so we certainly have deteriorated a little bit from that end of it.”
Overall, the Blueshirts are 6-for-44 for a 13.6 percent clip that is 25th overall in the NHL. Seven teams were at 30 percent or higher entering Tuesday night. Of the Rangers’ six power-play goals, all have been scored by the first unit, which generally commands upward of 1:30 of a 2:00 advantage.
Quinn and assistant coach David Oliver have been mixing and matching on both units. Kreider dropped off the first unit for a spell. Ryan Strome, a staple, has been shifted to the second unit. Buchnevich, Alexis Lafreniere, Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, Brett Howden, Ryan Strome (recently), Brendan Lemieux (lately), and K’Andre Miller (not lately) have appeared on the second unit, on which Jacob Trouba has been a constant.
Trouba has gotten 23:28 of power-play time. In contrast, Fox has gotten 47:09 and Miller has gotten a sum of 5:43.
“We know we’re not going to get a ton of time, it’s probably going to be off a change where we’ll be trying to breaking the puck out and trying to get pucks to the net quickly,” Trouba said. “We’re probably only going to have 30 or 40 seconds.
“Realistically, you’re not going to have a ton of time to get in there, set up and move it around for 20 seconds to leave yourself with 10 seconds to get a chance. You want to try to make plays and attack off the rush and be high energy.”
Quinn said the staff has discussed reinstalling Miller on one point in a two-defensemen setup. They’ve discussed other moves, as well.
“There will be some changes [for the Bruins],” Quinn said. “And as much as you can move personnel around and things like that, there has to be more of a pace and more of a work ethic to our power play overall.”
Five-on-five improvement wouldn’t hurt, either.
Julien Gauthier played perhaps his most impressive game as Ranger in Monday’s 2-0 loss to the Islanders while teaming with Kevin Rooney and Lemieux on the fourth line. Gauthier, playing in his third straight after serving as a healthy scratch for five in a row, still got a team-least 10:14 of ice time.
“I thought his game was better, and there’s always a path for a player to get more ice time based on how they play,” Quinn said of Gauthier, the Hurricanes’ 21st-overall selection of the 2016 entry draft, who has yet to score a goal in 23 NHL games. “We’ve spent a lot of time with him here, going over things he’s going to need to do consistently.
“It’s always hard for guys who have always scored their whole lives to kind of maybe accept a different role at this level, and I think Julien is going through that right now. I think he can score at this level, how much is to be determined.
“But I thought he made a step forward [Monday].”