If you’ve been speaking with me since the Rangers demise, you know the one thing that has been pissing me off to no end about our playoff loss, has been the fact that Tom Renney did not even once attempt the previously successful combinations of:
Dawes - Gomez - Shanahan
Straka - Drury - Callahan
Granted, Avery was hurt with 2 games to go, but it still bears some discussion. Because it wasn’t just in the playoffs where Tom didn’t try this combination. He did not attempt them for one period of any game following Scott Gomez’s comeback from his injury of 1 game.
Anyway, here is my “dissertation” (as the NYRangersCast love to remind me) of why this has bugged me so much.
The lines were put together on Feb 13th
http://rangers.lohudblogs.com/2008/02/13/hold-that-champagne/
From Feb 16th to March 25 the Rangers played 17 games.
During that time Avery had 9 goals, 5 assists for 14 points
Dubinsky had 4 goals and 10 assists for 14 points
Jagr had 5 goals and 11 assists for 16 points.
Top line production: 44 points
Nigel Dawes had 4 goals and 6 assists, for 10 points
Scotty Gomez had 3 goals and 9 assists for 12 points
Brendan Shanahan had 5 goals and 7 assists for 12 points
2nd line production: 34 points
Martin Straka had 3 goals and 11 assists for 14 points
Chris Drury had 5 goals and 6 assists for 11 points
Ryan Callahan had 6 goals and 2 assists for 8 points
3rd line production: 33 points
Total goals scored by the entire team during that time span: 51 (not counting shootouts, counting shootouts it becomes 55)
Total goals allowed by the entire team during that time span: 35 (with shootouts it becomes 38)
Average goals scored per game: 3
Average goals allowed per game: 2.06
In short, the team was playing great offense, the team was playing great defense, and MOST IMPORTANTLY the degree of separation between the first lines production, and second & third lines production was much smaller than it was during the playoffs.
In the playoffs:
First line production: 33 points (10 games)
Second line production: 23 points (10 games, 8 for avery)
Third line production: 14 points (10 games)
in much fewer games the degree of separation was drastic, if you extrapolate these to the same amount of games played, the difference in points between the first line and 3rd line becomes 32 points. Whereas between the first and 3rd in the first scenario the point differential was only 11 points.
What does all this number crunching mean?
We became a 1 line threat in the playoffs. We became so dependent on 1 line dominating the other team, that if you could shut them down (like the Pens did in game 5) the Rangers stood little to no chance of winning.
More importantly the team played much better in both ends of the ice with the first scenario.
We scored 31 goals in the playoffs in 10 games, thats 3.1 goals for per game.
We allowed 27 goals for in the playoffs. A gigantic rise in goals against (and before you say its because we faced the potent pens, remember, the Devils, an offensive inept team scored 12 goals against us, for a 2.4gaa, not good when playing a terrible team like that). 2.7 goals allowed on average is awful for the playoffs where scoring is usually drastically lower than in the regular season.
In short, with the lines placed the other way, we were a multi threat offense. You couldnt shut down just one line, because any of the 3 could light you up. Furthermore, because all 3 could play for long stretches in the offensive zone, the other teams had less time in our zone, and therefore we had to defend less.
Would it have translated 1:1 in the playoff? God only knows. But the fact that Tom Renney didn’t even try, not even once, really pisses me off to no end.