Taking early stock three games in

We should start with the good news: we're 1-2, not 0-3. But man, this team hasn't exactly looked great through 3 games in which it has given up 13 goals. Before we get into it, let's be clear: these are the reigning Eastern Conference champions, 3 games into an 82-game season, missing their big off-season defensive acquisition, their top center, and their leading scorer from last season. So it's hard to call things bad with any reasonable degree of veracity. We don't have to put any more stock into this start than we do into the Islanders' 2-0 start. And, like, I think maybe last season might not have started so well either or something? And it kinda went okay?

That said, the Rangers looked pretty bad this week, and we can try to draw some conclusions about changes we could be making to improve the team, both for now and for after we have any of our players back. So, what's been going wrong?

We'll skip goaltending 'cause it's pretty moot. Lundqvist is a known quantity, and a bad showing last night doesn't change that. Talbot is, as far as we know, a reliable backup. His .941 through 21 games last season is probably not sustainable, but we can only make decisions based on the knowledge we have, so Talbot is the right guy to go with as a backup for now.

Dan Boyle being out has definitely hurt this team's defensive corps, as you would expect it to. We basically brought him in to replace Anton Stralman, and we can't expect Boyle being out 4-6 weeks to hurt any less than losing Stralman for the same period would have last season. Also, last night, Ryan McDonagh was pretty noticeably bad, and we shouldn't expect that to last. "First night at the Garden as Captain" isn't the best explanation, but it's better than "Ryan McDonagh secretly got bad at hockey this August," so I'm not so worried about the top pair on this team.

Boyle's injury does expose some depth issues on defense, which I think is interesting, given that last season we felt like we had good defensive depth, and nothing has substantively changed. I see 3 possible reasons for this. 1) We were all pretending John Moore was better at hockey than he actually was. Last season is kind of a blur, but I'm pretty sure I remember liking Kevin Klein more than I liked Moore, and I have been very unimpressed by Moore so far this season. A quick look at his numbers, though, tells me I'm full of shit: Moore's CF% away from Klein last season was 52.9%, and Klein's away from Moore was 45.9% (together, they posted 49.7%). So has Moore been worse in these few games so far? It's hard to use possession statistics meaningfully in a 3-game sample, but Moore is already a Corsi -10 on the season, which doesn't feel great. Conclusion: it's only been 3 games, maybe Moore is better than this.

2) Matt Hunwick really is that much worse than Raphael Diaz. This is my father's theory, and I have trouble believing it, on the grounds of "how much does either of these guys really matter?" But, honestly, I did like Diaz in the very brief time we saw him for last season, and I have not liked Hunwick in the equally brief time so far, so maybe this is contributing. 3) We have less faith in Conor Allen and Dylan McIlrath than we did last season. I don't know why this would be true, but both came up and played games last season while we had defensemen out, and neither made the cut over Hunwick or Kostka this time around. If this is contributing to the defensive problem, then it's not actually a depth issue: we still have Allen and McIlrath in the system, and we could still bring them up at any time.

Overall defensive conclusion: stay the course for now. Our top guys are bound to right things a bit, it's at certainly plausible that Moore will improve, and Boyle will surely be back. If things remain bleak for a meaningful period of time, we've got Allen and McIlrath (and Kostka) waiting in the wings to challenge these guys' spots.

So what's been going wrong up front? It's hard to talk about this team's issues without starting down the middle. With Stepan out, Vigneault started the season with St. Louis at center and with Miller in as well (let's call those the two "experiments," with Brassard and Moore known effective centers). Though he clearly hasn't been as comfortable there as he is on his natural position at right wing, St. Louis has actually taken to centering better than I expected. He has already accumulated a Corsi +19 on a team with an overall Corsi -11. He's picked up faceoffs quickly: after going 4 for 11 in St. Louis, he went 7 for 16 in Columbus, and then 8 for 10 last night. And, somewhat improbably, his line has been responsible for 6 of the Rangers' 8 goals this season while only being on the ice for 1 of the 13 goals against. So if you hate Corsi for some reason (again, +19 on a team that is -11), St. Louis's on-ice goal differential is +5 on a team that is -5. Not too problematic, as a fill-in.

JT Miller, on the other hand, still seems to be riding the "potential" train. Despite 56 games over the course of the last 2 seasons, in which Miller was thoroughly mediocre (with the exception of Brian Boyle and Dominic Moore, who skew the numbers because their zone starts without him were so much harder than their zone starts with him, he brought down the Corsi of literally every linemate he had in those games except Taylor Pyatt, Brandon Mashinter, and Jeff Halpern), all anyone talks about is how he's going to be our next Chris Kreider. Maybe he is - 56 games is probably not enough to judge the trajectory of a 21-year-old's career - but he certainly hasn't looked good to me yet, at all. His Corsi actually looks better than his play has to me: in the 2 games he was in the middle so far this season, he accumulated a Corsi of +9 (due mostly to a surprising +7 in Columbus), but that doesn't really pass my smell test given how often I see him out of position, and while Corsi is certainly a better long-term indicator of success than goal differential, it doesn't exactly surprise me that he's been on the ice for just 1 of the Rangers' 8 goals and for 5 of their 13 goals against. And for a natural centerman, I'd like to see him do better than his current 9/23 on faceoffs.

Last night, in Zuccarello's absence, Vigneault took the opportunity to move Miller back over to the wing and bring up Kevin Hayes. Hayes looked to me to be much more solid in the position than Miller had been (though his 2/12 faceoff success was not thrilling), and he matched St. Louis for a team-high Corsi +9 for the game. At least for now, I'm prepared to agree with Vigneault's apparent inclination that Hayes is a better fit in the middle than Miller. Logically, then, when Zuccarello returns, it seems to me that he should replace Miller in the lineup, rather than Zuccarello's return forcing a worse center back to the middle. My fear is that Vigneault will return Miller to the middle when Zucc comes back, because he's the guy who we're "supposed to be developing there" - if Hayes is better, Hayes should play. If Hayes turns out to not be good, Miller is still around. But some days, I think I'm watching a different JT Miller than everyone else seems to be.

Down the wing, it's hard to have a ton of complaints about personnel. Duclair is a great fit pretty much anywhere, and the idea of him being up with linemates like St. Louis and/or Nash is pretty exciting. I wrote here that Hagelin with Brassard and Zuccarello seemed like a silly experiment, and a few games in, I'm not deterred. Kreider with Brassard, as he was last night, and Zuccarello, once he's back, is just a smarter fit. That leaves Hagelin and Duclair to be the fast, exciting left wingers on the other 2 of the top 3 lines. Stempniak has been great for us so far: he was the only non-Nash forward to have a good game in Columbus, and he's put together a Corsi +11 so far. Obviously, Rick Nash is the best.

Which brings us inexorably to the wings on the 4th line: Jesper Fast and Tanner Glass. Fast and Duclair were mentioned in the same breath a lot during the preseason, but it never seemed to me like they were really on the same level. He may be wasted in 4th-line situations or with a linemate like Glass (who isn't?), but of the non-Glass forwards, he's easily the odd man out to me right now. If reconstructing lines makes him go away for a while, I won't be that sad.

Speaking of people whose disappearances won't make me sad, what weird reality keeps Tanner Glass in this lineup and Ryan Malone in the press box? Glass, whose past performances in the NHL can easily all be described as awful, has defied expectations so far this season by being merely bad. Even in games like our two losses so far, wherein every Ranger forward looks bad, Glass stands out as a step or three slower than everyone else. His Corsi -17 is even worse than it sounds, as he's used in much easier situations than his 4th-line compatriots (last night, for example, Glass's relative offensive zone start percentage was actually positive, at 22.04%, compared to Dominic Moore's of -75.00%). He's out there shitting up the penalty kill, even!

When Glass was signed, he was praised (by the very few who were willing to praise him) for his "willingness to drop the gloves." You and I already knew that wasting a lineup spot - of which you only get 12 - on a guy who's only job is to punch and be punched is fucking crazy. But even if we use the power of our imaginations to create a false world in which fighting actually affects a game's outcome - even if "willingness to be punched in the head sometimes" were somehow a "skill" that got us closer to winning the Stanley Cup - even then, Glass's first 3 games as a Ranger would be an indisputable failure. In St. Louis, it was last season's leading scorer, Mats Zuccarello, who was willing to get his ass kicked for his team. In Columbus, when some Jacket took an uncalled run at Zuccarello's head, it was offensive powerhouse Chris Krieder who jumped in and defended his teammate, ultimately serving 17 minutes in the box for it. So far, all Glass has done is take an unprompted flying leap at David Clarkson's head toward the boards, miss, and not get called for it.

If the Rangers had won all 3 of these games, Tanner Glass would still have been a waste of a spot, but I could justify Vingeault leaving him there solely on the (still pretty false) basis that "you don't mess with success." Things being as they are, though, there is absolutely no excuse for Vigneault to leave Glass in the lineup while saying he "doesn't yet know what to do with" Ryan Malone. Malone is likely not the answer to our problems, but he certainly has the potential to do more to help the team with that 12th lineup spot than Tanner Glass has done.

Islanders Tuesday, Hurricanes Thursday, Sharks Sunday to finish up this 4-game homestand. If I ran things, I'd make the Malone/Glass change effective immediately and shift the other forwards around when Zucc returns (he's day-to-day). No reason to blow everything up after a couple of terrible games; but no reason, either, to keep employing Tanner Glass. Also no good goddamn reason to lose to the Islanders, ever, so maybe do everything you can to make the lineup good enough to not lose to the Islanders.

Oh PS Rick Nash is a dad now.

Let's Go Rangers!