The New York Rangers are looking for an identity and facing a lot of questions
daily confrontation: David Paniotta was asked about the New York Rangers and their early-season struggles. They won’t rebuild if things don’t go well, but may regroup as they find their identity. Which direction will they eventually go?
** Transcribed by NHLRumors.com
Colby Cohen: “I want to be on the subway with you, and I hope, I hope Johnny is watching, because I want to talk to you about the New York Rangers and the issues that they’re facing. You know, we spent a lot of time this morning talking about Brennan Osman and why the New York Rangers aren’t going to let this guy go. I mean it, it makes sense to me. Why would you let him walk out the door, potentially, Go somewhere else and be successful and then you look like a fool unless a big name comes back the other way?
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But like, I look at Will Culley, I look at (Alexis) Lafreniere on the wing, and I think about their goal struggle. It’s like, what is Chris Drury going to do because you didn’t make Mike Sullivan a good team? You pay him a lot of money. Now you have to give him the weapons to make a competitive team. And right now, they’re not scoring enough to really compete at a high enough level.
Pagnotta: “Yeah, no, I agree with you. The struggle there is real. They just don’t know what they are, look that word is being used all the time now, but they don’t know their identity. They’re trying to find what their identity is. Everyone is using that word now, but to them, it’s totally valid. They, they, they’re constantly changing.
You know, guys like (Artemi) Panarin, who’s going to be a UFA at the end of the year, no matter where this team ends up going, they’re going to have to make an internal decision about what they want to do with them. Do you go out and try and try to keep them and add extra pieces? Is it ok this season? Or do you move him, bring in young assets, bring in more players? That will be later in the season anyway.
But to try, to try to restructure on the fly, like this team isn’t going to be in a quasi-rebuild like they were a few years ago, they’re kind of pretending to be. Ended up getting Lafreniere first and then decided to keep adding to it.
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As much as this team has to be in the position that they’re in, it’s a shakeup. So, based on how the season is going, is (Mika) Zibanejad able to make even more progress this season? Is it Panarin? Are there any other works from this club? How does (Igor) Shesterkin get along with some of the people in front of him? Can he save them under certain circumstances?
Like you said, this is a team that struggles to score. Can other members of this club step up and push them a little further? Can they have a consistent conversation about playoff contention?
If not, then, yes. Chris Drury has some serious questions to answer. Would you go on a big fish hunt again in a different way, hoping to make a big hockey-style, bombshell-style move by removing key pieces to bring in additional key pieces or other key pieces?
This is a tricky situation for the Rangers because, you’re right, they brought in Mike Sullivan to help move this team forward. Like ownership, it’s just barking at them, like, fill up the building, get in contention, let’s get back to contender status and fight for that top spot in the metro. This is a difficult task.
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They don’t know what they are, I don’t like that, I don’t like that, and I think management doesn’t know what the hell they have either. So they need to do a lot of different internal struggles to imagine exactly the path they want to take before they start taking action. It’s like they wrote some, some, some fragments on paper, kids, but it hasn’t solidified yet.
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