The New York Rangers looked like a spent force last spring. After two deep playoff runs in the preceding years, the Rangers lasted just five games against a vastly superior Pittsburgh Penguins team. Given the age of some of their key players, that series loss could have been taken as a harbinger of things to come.
Instead, New York has looked like a team reborn in the early part of 2016-17.
The improvement has been across the board:
The club’s score-adjusted Corsi rating is up two full percentage points from last year (from 48 to 50 percent), meaning that the Rangers are doing a better job of winning the territorial battle.
The Rangers are averaging 4.1 goals per game and allowing just 2.3 goals against per game. This compares to last season where those numbers were 2.8 and 2.6, respectively. While it’s unrealistic to expect New York to maintain this torrid pace, an improvement on last year’s season-end totals seems probable.
The penalty kill has improved dramatically, going from a 78 percent success rate last season to nearly 84 percent this year. The growth has been driven by massive progress in shot s ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
Breaking Down the New York Rangers’ Surprising Success in 2016-17
November 14th, 2016 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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