NHL teams
Ryan Wagman, Hockey Prospectus 9y

How to fix the New York Rangers

NHL

Coming off of an Eastern Conference title, good things were expected of the New York Rangers in 2014-15. After all, the team featured one of the best goaltenders of this generation, a gracefully aging Martin St. Louis (now for a full season), the much-derided but immensely talented Rick Nash and the dynamic young captain Ryan McDonagh, one of the league's best young defensemen. Yet through 29 games, over one-third of the way through the schedule, the Blueshirts cling to the final wild-card spot, tied in points with two clubs currently below the line. What is wrong with this team? Where did the projections err?

Head coach Alain Vigneault, one of the most analytics-friendly coaches in the game, has led his teams to the top of the possession leader board for each of the past four seasons, ranging from 51.4 to 52.7 Corsi in his last three seasons behind the bench in Vancouver, and a very healthy 52.4 Corsi in his first season on Broadway. Through Saturday night's 5-1 victory over the Canucks, this season's edition of the Rangers is controlling only 49.1 percent of even-strength shot attempts, which is 22nd leaguewide.

The scary thing is that it could all be much worse. With a teamwide PDO (the sum of the team even-strength shooting percentage and even-strength save percentage) of 101.9, where 100 is average, the Rangers are actually out-producing their underlying metrics. Considering that their NHL-leading 9.8 percent shooting percentage at even strength will not last forever, what can the Rangers do to ensure that they do not follow-up a mildly surprising Stanley Cup finals berth with a postseason-free spring?

Bearing in mind that their first-round pick for the 2015 draft has already been dealt to Tampa Bay in the St. Louis deal, and we can see that the Rangers need to do everything they possibly can to make it to the dance once more. Here are their biggest three problems, along with solutions to each:

Note: Advanced metrics courtesy of war-on-ice.com, behindthenet.ca, puckalytics.com and hockeyprospectus.com.


The first problem

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