Rangers pinpoint major problem with their man advantage
The slowness in the Rangers’ all-around game has seeped into their power play, which has gone 0-for-10 with the team down 2-1 in its best-of-seven, first-round series against the Canadiens.
So going into Game 4 on Tuesday night at the Garden, the hope is that the man-advantage can start making quicker decisions. It began with about 20 minutes of work on it during Monday’s practice.
“Throughout the season, every day that we practice, we work on speciality teams, any extent [between] 20-30 percent of practice,” coach Alain Vigneault said. “[Monday] was no different. We did work on our execution on making a couple quicker plays.”
The power play was especially poor when the unit went 0-for-3 in the disheartening 3-1 loss in Game 3 on Sunday night at the Garden. And the performance was even more impactful when compared to the Canadiens going 2-for-3, scoring the first goal on the man-advantage for either team this series.
“There’s no doubt, the game, they scored two power-play goals and our power play doesn’t execute and really doesn’t get us a scoring chance,” Vigneault said. “We’re aware of that, we’re going to work on being better [Tuesday]. That’s what we can control right now.”
Vigneault also did change the makeup of the units. He inserted rookie Pavel Buchnevich into the first unit with Ryan McDonagh, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Mats Zuccarello. Buchnevich was a healthy scratch for the first three games of this series.
The second unit was Brady Skjei, J.T. Miller, Kevin Hayes, Rick Nash and Derek Stepan.
After benching defenseman Nick Holden in place of Kevin Klein for Game 3, it seemed like Vigneault was set to go back to Holden for Game 4. Although not disclosing any lineup information, Vigneault put Holden back on the right side with Marc Staal, while moving Brendan Smith back with Skjei and Klein to play with depth defenseman Steven Kampfer.
“I still do like his game,” Vigneault said of Holden, who wasn’t scratched scratch once even though he struggled for about the final month or so of the regular season. “He’s a dependable, good, steady defenseman that can move the puck when the pressure is on. Like any player in any year, he has good moments and some other moments might be a little more challenging.
“If he plays [in Game 4], I’m going to expect him to be good.”
Vigneault changed his forward lines in practice, which might or might not mean anything after he ran out some fake lines in warm-ups before Game 3. But he did have Buchnevich rotating with Tanner Glass on a line with Kreider and Zibanejad, as well as combinations of Jimmy Vesey-Stepan-Nash, Miller-Hayes-Zuccarello and Michael Grabner-Oscar Lindberg-Jesper Fast.