The Rangers have an excellent goalie, some top notch centermen and what should be scary looking PP. But they still languish near the bottom of the league in terms of GF (94) and are only have a GD of +3. Reasons why I think the Rangers will have a big 2nd half of the season and will likely win their division:
Henrik Lundqvist:
He's been one of the best goalies in the league since his rookie season and this year isn't an exception. He's currently amongst the top 10 in wins and GAA and in the top 20 in terms of SV%. Desjardins of behindthenet fame wrote an interesting article on ES save percentage at his blog recently that further illuminates King Henrik's contributions:
Henrik Lundqvist has allowed 41 goals on 567 shots at 5-on-5, for a 927 save percentage. However, an average goalie who faced the 567 shots from the same locations would expect to allow 58.3 goals, for an 897 save percentage. On a per-60-minute basis, Lundqvist's Goals-Against-Average is 1.90 - 0.80 goals lower than an average goalie.
According to Desjardins, Lundqvist had the second biggest differential between actual and expected save percentage in the league at the time the article was written. Now, this could mean a couple of things**...
1.) Lundqvist is going through an unsustainable hot streak (Tim Thomas was first in the league by this measure for example).
2.) Lundqvist routinely makes "big saves" on quality scoring chances.
Given his performance and pedigree, I'd say it's scenario #2.
**(this also implies that the Rangers give up their fair share of scoring chances and would be in trouble with a lesser goalie)
Shot Differential:
The Rags are the 2nd best team in the league at out-shooting their opponents behind the mighty Red Wings. The league standings by average shots for look like this:
1.) Detroit 35 SF/G, (23.4 SA/G)
2.) Carolina 32.3 SF/G (29.9 SA/G)
3.) Ottawa 31.3 SF/G (30.0 SA/G)
4.) NY Rangers 30.9 SF/G (26.2 SA/G)
and now, by goals for:
1.) Ottawa 3.54 GPG
2.) Detroit 3.42 GPG
3.) Carolina 3.05 GPG
4.) Dallas 2.95 GPG
...
25.) NY Rangers 2.41 GPG
The blueshirts have scored just 94 goals on 1207 shots so far. That's a team wide shooting percentage of about 7.8%. To put that in perspective, the Edmonton Oilers have managed 93 goals on 1012 shots - a 9.2% team SH%. A cursory glance at both rosters suggests that just ain't right.
In fact, despite boasting a roster with Jagr, Drury, Gomez, Straka and Shanahan, the Rangers have the lowest teamwide shooting efficacy in the whole league...
Out of the 30 teams, NYR is the only one with a SH% below 8. They are a full 1.8% below the league average of 9.6% and are well below a lot of teams with "lesser rosters" in terms of offensive talent (EDM, VAN, BOS, WSH). If the Rags had been scoring at the middling rate of 9.6% through the first half of the season, they would have about 116 GF at this point and a GD of +22. Meaning, they'd likely be on top of the ATL division and one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference as well. And that's just if they were shooting at the league average - and, given their roster, I think they should technically be a notch or two above it.
What does this mean? Some bad luck, some new players acclimating to their surroundings and Jagr slowing down a bit. Overall, though, I see the Rangers trending upwards. They routinely out-shoot their foes, they have an elite tender and a forward corps that is bound to bust out of the offensive doldrums eventually.
As a Flames fan, I just have to hope the rebound doesn't start tonight (although technically, I think it's started already). The Flames are still 4th in the NW division despite a solid December and will need to scrape together as many points as possible from January to April if they hope to make the post season. Calgary is 7-1-2 in their last 10. They had a 6 game winning streak and a single regulation loss last month. And despite all that, they still project to finish the year with a piddly 92 points. That's a pretty thin line between play-off berth and bust - a path that will look pretty bloody unpleasant if the Flames squeeze into the post season only to face the Detroit Red Wings in the first round again. Ugh.
Anyways, as for tonight, looks like Craig Conroy has once again cemented himself on the top line, this time with Huselius and Iginla. Here are the recent practice trios according to Lefebvre and Cruickshank:
Juice-Conroy-Iginla
Tanguay-Langkow-Nolan
Nystom-Lombardi-Boyd
Smith-Yelle-Godard
(Primeau, Nilson)
Yes, that's $2.4M worth of healthy scratch. I don't know what we're going to do with all these guys once Moss returns. Demoting some of these anchors to the farm and ridding the club of their cap-hit would be a good start though.
The 2nd scoring unit gets a bit more of a chance to actually score with Langkow on it, which works for me. Interesting thing about that line from the Canucks game - Keenan seemed to be playing them against the Sedin Twins and leaving Iggy to face Kesler and whoever he was playing with (Burrows and Ritchie I think). Maybe that was AV line-matching like a bugger, but Keenan** didn't seem too bothered to get away from the match-up if so. In not, that may mean Iron Mike's gotten away from running power vs. power.
**Bonus fact - to my eye it looked like Keenan was playing David Hale with Iginla's line that night. Sure enough, according to the H2H ice-time, Hale and Aucoin spent as much time behind Jarome as Phanuef and Eriksson at ES. Blech! Not that Kesler et al are a threat to score, but the number of times offensive zone opportunities died because the puck was fed back to Hale at the point made me more than a little annoyed.
Of course, Regehr and Sarich were matched against the Sedins, meaning they spent a lot of time behind the Langkow unit.
