New York Rangers: Can They Find Their Offense Against the Capitals Tonight?

Tuesday night, tonight, the New York Rangers will host the eastern conference leading Washington Capitals, in what will be the Rangers second game out of a four game home stand. The Rangers lost their last game Saturday night against the league’s best team, the St.Louis Blues, and will look to bounce back tonight with a victory.

The Rangers are expected to start their superstar goaltender, Henrik Lundqvist, tonight against the Capitals, and he may have to carry them to victory.

The Rangers have not had any secondary scoring this season (sound familiar?), but Marian Gaborik is not the player in need of help on offense. As a line, Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, and Ryan Callahan have led the Rangers offensively this season.

Combined, that line has a total of 17 goals this season. Dubinsky has scored 10 goals, Callahan has scored four goals, and Anisimov has tallied three goals on the year so far.

In fourteen games this season, the Rangers offense has scored 38 goals. That line of Dubinsky, Anisimov, and Callahan has scored 45 percent of the New York Rangers goals this season.

Rangers head coach John Tortorella has noticed the goal differentials from line-to-line, and he has attempted to increase scoring production by switching line combinations late in the game.

The line-swapping has not changed a thing.

Experimenting with lines was one of the many things that got the Rangers into trouble last season. Tortorella would constantly swap lines around each game, which would defeat the purpose of players building chemistry together.

 What about Marian Gaborik and Vinny Prospal? Yes, they had chemistry. But how many times did the third man on that line change?

Enver Lisin, Erik Christensen, Sean Avery, Brandon Dubinsky, and Olli Jokenin were all given opportunities on the first line with Gaborik and Prospal. In the end it was Erik Christensen who stole the spot on the top-line with those two.

Yes the offense has struggled in the last few games, but swapping lines around every shift is not the answer. That will not fix anything. If Tortorella would like to swap combinations around, he should do it during morning skates and practices. At least that will give him an idea of who works well together and who does not when the time comes to make a switch on offense.

Now let’s get to defense.

The defense was NOT a problem in the Rangers loss to St.Louis. They sucked in Philadelphia on Thursday night, but in the previous two games against the Devils on Friday and the Blues on Sunday, the defense was not a problem. They were blocking shots, covering players, and were very good on the penalty kill.

The defense does not need a change right now, and the defensive pairings should remain the same tonight against the Capitals.

Now to the power play.

On Sunday the Rangers power play was horrific. They were not getting the puck to the net, and spent way too much time throwing around weak passes, and allowing the Blues penalty kill to shoot the puck out of the zone every five seconds.

So what needs to be done?

Easy, SHOOT THE PUCK! The Rangers have hard shooting defenseman on the point with Michael Del Zotto and Michal Rozsival; and they have hard-shooting forwards such as Brandon Dubinsky and Alexander Frolov.

The Rangers constantly have players crashing the net on the power play, just no pucks being shot at them. Obviously they are missing Marian Gaborik, and when he gets back the power play should improve. It will not be much longer until he returns to the line-up, but until then the Rangers need guys like Alexander Frolov stepping up on the man-advantage.

Throw shots on net, there are body’s in front waiting to deflect them. For example, the Brian Boyle power play goal against the Devils. A big body in front of the net ready for a shot, Dan Girardi ripped a shot on net and Boyle deflected it for a goal.

The power play must improve for the Rangers to become a stronger team.

If there are any line-up changes for tonight’s Rangers game, expect an update around three or four o’clock.

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