Saturday, I was walking through downtown Pittsburgh and I saw a dude in a Penguins hat. My immediate thought was, "yesterday, you were the team we knocked out in the second round, and we were one of the two teams in the Final. Today, we are two of the 29 teams that do not have the Stanley Cup." It was not a good moment for me, though it's easy to understand: the goal is always to win the Stanley Cup, and you're supposed to be disappointed when you don't. But with 29 teams in the league (the Islanders don't really count for these purposes), odds are that you're on pace to be disappointed 28 out of every 29 years you're a hockey fan. So is that really the right attitude to have?
Obviously, it depends. This season, the Columbus Blue Jackets were, by many reckonings, a meaningful team for the first time in their history. As a Blue Jackets fan, of course you wanted to get through your first-round series, but I can't imagine you being fundamentally disappointed in your season, far from the Cup though it was. Meanwhile in San Jose, Sharks fans over the last few seasons have been ready to jump off of basically any available ledge, despite some consistently very good hockey over that stretch, thanks to a handful of short stretches of losses in April and May. So how are we supposed to feel as Ranger fans right now?
The 2013-'14 team was great, likable, and exciting. The team came out of the gate 2-6 with a brand new coaching staff, was battling to get out of last place in the league's worst division in December, and ended up winning the Eastern Conference, going through in sequence its recent Winter Classic rival, the universally accepted best team in its division (after being down 3 games to 1), and the team that beat the best team in the conference, and putting us in our first Stanley Cup Final since 1994. In that Final, the Rangers went up against the obviously superior team that had won the obviously superior conference and went down in 5. So why are we heartbroken? Bizarrely, the sad, bitter Flyers fan Puck Daddy found to write the 2013-'14 Rangers' hate-eulogy more or less nails it: we're heartbroken because it could have gone differently.
The Kings were the better possession team all season long, the deeper, scarier team, and the media and Vegas consensus. And they ultimately won, as they probably should have. But the games weren't one-sided like they were supposed to be. Through the first three games (all of which, I don't have to remind you, the Kings won), when the teams were skating 5-on-5 and the score was close, the Kings only attempted 3 more shots total than the Rangers, 108-105 (each individual game was similarly close). The three games in LA (all of which, again, the Kings won) were overtime decisions (the first time a Stanley Cup Final has ever had that many overtimes in that few games). The Rangers led in the series for 111:04 to the Kings' 69:34, and they were the first team in Stanley Cup Final history to lead for over 100 minutes through the first 4 games without at least being up 3-1 in the series. And there were plentiful obviously botched calls that led directly to Kings victories: notably the missed goalie interference on the goal that sent Game 2 to overtime, the missed delay of game immediately before that game's OT winner, and the backwards tripping call that went against the victim (Zuccarello) instead of the perpetrator (Muzzin) which gave the Kings the Power Play goal that sent Game 5 to overtime as well.
Which is not to blame the officiating for the results - awful officiating is increasingly just a factor of the game, and anyway you can't blame the officials when the obviously better team wins. Rather, the point is: there was hope. Through much of the series, the Rangers went toe-to-toe with the eventual Cup champions, and we just kept on being That One Bounce after That One Bounce from greatness. That's why the team has so much to be proud of and why we as fans have so much to be excited about, but it's also why it's so painful - despite ending 4 games to 1, this series was very, very close. And the games were very, very good. If nothing else, we should be excited that the team we like was a part of those hockey games.
It's hard to talk about individual performances without talking about the future, which I'm sure I'll be doing soon enough, but let's try to hit a few.
-- Everyone is wrong about Rick Nash, who was a force these whole playoffs despite not finding the back of the net too often. His relative Corsi For Percentage (that's the one that approximates possession by measuring shot attempt differential, comparing a player to the rest of his own team) this second season was +5.0%, good for 4th on the team behind Klein, Pouliot, and Brassard, all three of whom played fewer minutes and were used for easier zone starts than Nash, who attempted 317 shots in his 327.6 minutes. In fact, only 4 Ranger forwards were used for more defensive starts than Nash: Kreider and the fourth line. While Corsi doesn't tell us everything, Nash was likely the Rangers' most valuable puck possessor in these playoffs, and having the puck is a super good way to win hockey. Rick Nash is awesome, and possibly the single most promising thing about this playoff run was when Coach Vigneault answered the media's questions about Nash's lack of scoring with "our stats tell us he's been our most valuable player, so I'm not worried."
-- On the other hand, despite a very strong rebound in the regular season and acting as de facto captain in the wake of Callahan's departure, Brad Richards may well find his "overpaid and overrated" narrative to be far truer than Nash's. Seeing similar production to Nash (5 goals to Nash's 3, with the same 7 assists), Richards's possession numbers are far uglier. Despite seeing 58.7% of his playoff zone starts in the offensive zone (more than any Ranger forward except Pouliot, whose CF% we noted was very good), Richards clocked a relative CF% of -4.4%, ahead of only two Ranger forwards: Brian Boyle and Carl Hagelin, whose numbers are quite expectedly low, as they were the team's #1 penalty killing pair all playoff long. At a cursory glance, if Nash was our most valuable puck possessor based on his Corsi and zone starts, it's possible that Richards was our worst.
-- What am I going to do with Anton Stralman? If Richards took up the mantle Callahan left behind, Stralman took up Del Zotto's, that of the "most frustrating defenseman." He was certainly the guy I was most likely to yell at (...my TV because of) this season. The turnover guy. But as you've heard everyone in the media say for 2 months, Stralman and Staal became an extremely reliable pair for this team. In fact, a glance at their usage tells us that these two, not McDonagh and Girardi, were the pair the coach went to when he needed reliable defense. Stralman started only 39.8% of his playoff zone starts in the offensive zone (Staal started only 37.1%), to McDonagh's 50.0% and Girardi's 50.7%. Nonetheless, Stralman's relative CF% was positive (+2.5%), meaning he was actually above average for the Rangers, despite being used in such defensive situations. His Corsi differential was better than Staal's, McDonagh's, and Girardi's. And as you'll recall, Stralman's possession numbers in the regular season indicated that he may have been bringing Staal up, not the other way around. As I've said, Corsi doesn't tell us everything, and this doesn't exactly pass the smell test with flying colors (synesthesia?), but it may indicate that Stralman was a lot more valuable for us than we think.
-- Meanwhile, the most depressing news Ranger fans heard today came from the mouth of Dan Girardi, who told us that he wasn't really injured during these playoffs. I, for one, had just kind of assumed he was skating with 3 broken ribs and 4 dislocated shoulders or something. Sure, he had some high-profile gaffes, and those are always going to make us a little harsher on the rest of what a player does. But those gaffes really seemed like they were generally surrounded by otherwise mediocre-to-bad play. Girardi's relative CF% in the playoffs was an abominable -7.9%, 2nd to last on the team (ahead of only Carl "I will kill all of the penalties because I am basically Barry Allen" Hagelin), despite his above average zone starts. This from a guy only 2 years removed from being an All-Star, whose regular season this year was generally pretty reliable, boasting a modestly positive CF% paired with a modestly defensive zone start percentage. Girardi might not win "worst," but he wins "most disappointing" by a mile. Defensemen are supposed to deteriorate later than forwards, and G is only 30, so... I don't know. Let's just assume this was a 2-month blip so that we can continue to sleep at night.
-- Believe the hype: Henrik Lundqvist really is that good. When the King signed his new contract, it was reasonably clear that spending as much as $8.5 million for 39-year-old Henrik Lundqvist was the price we were willing to pay for the right to only pay $8.5 million for 32-year-old Henrik Lundqvist. So far, so good, as the "lone name above the marquee" (the term coined by Larry Brooks has continued to be an appropriate one) showed us a really special playoff performance, allowing 54 goals on 737 shots in the playoffs (.927), including only 8 goals on 224 shots (.964) in potential elimination games for the Rangers. "Blameless" doesn't begin to cover Lundqvist's play this second season, and while Justin Williams certainly earned his trophy, I can't imagine anyone would have been too surprised if Hank had become the 6th player in NHL history to win the Conn Smythe without winning the Cup.
Lundqvist not lifting the Cup this season is all the way depressing, people.
All the way depressing.
And I guess that's the takeaway for tonight: be depressed by this. Wallow. I won't go back into why getting unreasonably emotionally invested in a team is great, but it fucking well is. This team that we've been watching all our lives, this likable roster full of Marty St. Louis and Dominic Moore and Henrik Lundqvist and Mats Zuccarello, these guys did something really special this season, and then they ultimately fell short of their goal. Be proud. Be inconsolable. Let yourself feel all those silly emotions brought on by a series of games you had nothing to do with: that's why we watch. And in a league with 29 teams vying for the Cup every year, seasons like these don't come around too regularly.
And if you get the chance, spend a little time thinking about the actual hockey we got to witness! Great, meaningful, June hockey! Hockey we'd have watched and loved even if the Rangers hadn't been involved! Hockey is the fucking best, you guys! These were great goddamn hockey games!
And if that doesn't do it for you, within the next couple of weeks, we start making roster decisions to build next year's contender: you can always start in early on your delusional hopes for 2014-'15 being the year that 1994 stops having to "last a lifetime."
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