Kaapo Kakko

In Wake of Victory over L.A., Igor Shesterkin Will Be the Starter in Goal

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New York Rangers, Igor Shesterkin

Many are quite aware that the New York Rangers are one of the youngest teams in the NHL. With that youth, there will be some up and downs like the games they played last weekend. After losing a poorly played game against the Buffalo Sabres Friday night, the Rangers rebounded to defeat the Los Angeles Kings Sunday night by a score of 4-1. Eighteen-year-old Kaapo Kakko scored his first goal in 14 games. Greg McKegg, Artemi Panarin and Tony DeAngelo also scored for New York. Igor Shesterkin picked up the win and recorded 42 saves.

New York Rangers end goalie rotation

After Sunday’s win, head coach David Quinn announced that he will no longer rotate goalies and that Igor Shesterkin will continue to start. Quinn indicated that Shesterkin will continue to start regularly because he’s been the most consistent of the Rangers three goalies. “The best guy is going to continue to play,” Quinn said. “Keeping people sharp is no longer a high priority of ours. It’s going to be winning hockey games and the guy who plays well is going to keep playing.” Shesterkin has won three straight starts and five of his first six in the NHL. He is the first Rangers goalie in history to accomplish that feat. On Monday confirmed that Shesterkin will be in net when the Blueshirts travel to Winnipeg to take on the Jets. This is the first of a three-game road trip that includes stops in Minnesota and Columbus.

The “Consistently Inconsistent” New York Rangers

After Friday’s loss, Quinn noted that his young Rangers sometimes will struggle. “We like to keep things interesting. We’re getting better at it, but we have a hard time playing simple hockey from time to time.” This was an especially difficult loss at the Sabres had been struggling before coming into Friday nights games. Sunday night’s performance was much better in defeating a struggling, but pesky Kings team. Quinn pointed out that in order to win, the young players will need to contribute like they did Sunday night when they got big contributions from  Shesterkin,  Kakko, Filip Chytil and the recently called up, Phillip Di Giuseppe. Quinn summed up the night by saying that “it may have not been pretty hockey, but it was hard played hockey”.

The New York Rangers’ Doghouse is Open For Business

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New York Rangers, Brady Skjei

New York Rangers head coach David Quinn might be beginning to show his frustration with the slow start to games the team has experienced in their last two contests.  People had noticed that during Thursday night’s game against Calgary that a couple of players did not see ice time for most of the third period. Hence being placed in Quinn’s doghouse, which is surprisingly defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as “a situation in which someone is angry at you for something you did or did not do.” The two most recent notables to experience this were Brady Skjei and Kaapo Kakko.

Skjei continues to struggle for the New York Rangers

Social media blew up when the television cameras caught David Quinn leaning over to assistant coach Lindy Ruff and appeared to tell him something to the effect that Skjei does not get any more ice time. Skjei continues to be plagued by turnovers, including a key one in which he tried to clear a puck, and it went right to the Flames’ Dillon Dube, who promptly found Derek Ryan, who scored the goal that made the game 3-2. The benching came in the last 10 minutes of the third period when Skjei was tagged what could have been described as a questionable penalty call. However, it was one of a handful of crucial penalties the Blueshirts took as they were trying to tie up the game.

Kakko’s Benching a Bit of a Surprise

Kakko had already picked up a goal and assist in the Calgary game, but the 18-year-old was whistled for holding at 12:08 of the final period and was benched. After serving the penalty, he did not see the ice for the remainder of the game. Puzzling more was that the line of Brett Howden, Filip Chytil, and Kakko dominated shift after shift for most of the contest. Now, we may also consider that something else was wrong with Kakko that Quinn did not share. It has been well documented that the youngster deals with type 1 diabetes and celiac disease, and perhaps his playing time was influenced by this.

David Quinn is never one that has backed off from the tough love approach of trying to bring along younger players. Let’s hope that this approach will help more than it hurts their development.

New York Rangers’ Resolution to Start Games Better Fails; Lose to Flames

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New York Rangers, Henrik Lundqvist

Across the board, members of the New York Rangers hockey team stated that they needed to come prepared to play at the beginning of games. This followed the debacle in Edmonton in which the team gave up six goals in the first two periods before a furious rally came up just short. However, that did not happen on Thursday night as the Rangers fell to the Calgary Flames 4-3. Yes, that same Calgary Flames team that had been 0-4-1 in its last five home games.

The New York Rangers have Plenty of Blame to Go Around

In the loss to Edmonton, the poor defensive play was pointed out as one of the main culprits in that game. In Calgary, that was not the case. Sloppy play lead to the first two goals. Poor passing led to Johnny Gaudreau sliding a backhand between Lundqvist’s legs on a breakaway to put Calgary up 1-0 at 4:15 for the first period.

The breakaways were not done as an old nemesis returned to the Ranger power play: too much passing. During a five on three power play, the Rangers passed the puck around multiple times until an errant Tony DeAngelo pass was nabbed by Michael Backlund, who made it 2-0 with another breakaway at 7:16 of the first period.

Not a good way to start a game, especially against a reeling team that had been outscored 22-9 during its five-game home-ice losing streak. A glaring stat from the game was that the line of Artemi Panarin, Ryan Strome, and Jesper Fast were a -3 for the game, so it is not surprising to see where the sloppy, inconsistent play started.  It does not get better as Saturday as the Rangers head to Vancouver to face a Canucks team that has won six straight.

There was some good news for the New York Rangers

The Rangers did bounce back after going down by two goals. Jacob Trouba scored on the power play on that same 5-on-3 to cut the lead to 2-1 at 7:42. Filip Chytil, still with the man advantage, scored on a rebound 25 seconds later to tie it 2-2. Kaapo Kakko had a goal and an assist breaking a scoring drought while Adam Fox had three assists against the team that drafted him.