Despite the talent and precision that has pushed the unit to the No. 1 overall rating earlier this season — and despite his team’s current five-game winning streak — Peter Laviolette knows the Rangers still have to sort out their suddenly ineffective power play.
And he fully believes they are going to.
The Rangers are presently in an 0-for-17 rut with the man-advantage entering Thursday’s home game against the Canadiens.
They haven’t scored a power-play goal in seven games since Jan. 21 against Anaheim to drop their overall percentage to fifth-best within the NHL at 25.6 percent, down from 28.7 percent before the recent slippage.
“I believe stretches are all the time difficult, they’re all the time topics of debate. I can inform you that I actually have an amazing amount of confidence in the fellows which are on the ice,” Laviolette said after practice Wednesday in Tarrytown. “Like anything, there’s a funk that may go on. Our job is to determine that funk.
“And I actually have tremendous confidence in the fellows that they are going to. They’re talented players, they’ve been together an extended time, and we’ve gotta work our way out of it.”
Laviolette briefly broke up his longtime top power-play unit in Monday’s 2-0 win against the Flames, before he reunited the quintet of Adam Fox, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck late in the sport.
4 of those players also worked together during five-on-four and four-on-three drills in practice Wednesday, although Kreider was excused for private reasons.
“I believe that the fellows that took us to the numbers that you simply’re talking about are those that ought to be on the market. But we do need things to occur, too,” Laviolette said. “That’s why you have a look at it and say perhaps we’ll change it for a game and see where it goes, but those players are the players, the fellows, that ought to be on the ice to try to make a difference.
“They’ve had a ton of success. They’ve had success for us this 12 months. We’ve gotta get them back on the right track.”
Trocheck, who represented the Rangers on the All-Star Game together with goalie Igor Shesterkin, is tied for the team lead with Panarin and Kreider with nine power-play goals apiece, followed by Zibanejad’s seven.
Fox, the 2021 Norris Trophy-winning defenseman, has three with 17 assists, but no other player on the roster has netted greater than Alexis Lafreniere’s two goals in man-up situations.
“Sometimes the puck goes in the web, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Trocheck said. “We’re getting numerous possibilities that aren’t getting in, when earlier within the 12 months, there sometimes were fewer possibilities and so they were getting in.
“I believe it’s just not worrying about and avoiding questions like this. The more you concentrate on it, the more it’s gonna eat at you otherwise you’re gonna grip the stick tighter. It’s times like this at any time when you’re not scoring on the facility play, you are worried about scoring on the facility play and also you’re specializing in doing so many various things, when in point of fact, what we do typically works. So we just gotta persist with it.”
The previous time the Blueshirts faced the Canadiens, they suffered a 4-3 shootout loss in Montreal on Jan. 6, early on through the team’s 5-7-2 slide in January.
However the Rangers righted themselves with a 7-2 road win over the Senators in the ultimate game of the month before the All-Star break to ignite their current winning streak — wherein they’ve outscored their opponents 18-7 despite the poor power-play performance.
“It wasn’t a fantastic month for us, and in order that game [in Montreal] obviously didn’t go the best way we wanted it to on the scoreboard,” Laviolette said. “There have been numerous good things we did contained in the game, the goaltender [veteran backup Jonathan Quick] played a heck of a game that night, but we were left on the short end of the stick. It’s a likelihood to right a incorrect [Thursday].”
Despite the talent and precision that has pushed the unit to the No. 1 overall rating earlier this season — and despite his team’s current five-game winning streak — Peter Laviolette knows the Rangers still have to sort out their suddenly ineffective power play.
And he fully believes they are going to.
The Rangers are presently in an 0-for-17 rut with the man-advantage entering Thursday’s home game against the Canadiens.
They haven’t scored a power-play goal in seven games since Jan. 21 against Anaheim to drop their overall percentage to fifth-best within the NHL at 25.6 percent, down from 28.7 percent before the recent slippage.
“I believe stretches are all the time difficult, they’re all the time topics of debate. I can inform you that I actually have an amazing amount of confidence in the fellows which are on the ice,” Laviolette said after practice Wednesday in Tarrytown. “Like anything, there’s a funk that may go on. Our job is to determine that funk.
“And I actually have tremendous confidence in the fellows that they are going to. They’re talented players, they’ve been together an extended time, and we’ve gotta work our way out of it.”
Laviolette briefly broke up his longtime top power-play unit in Monday’s 2-0 win against the Flames, before he reunited the quintet of Adam Fox, Artemi Panarin, Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck late in the sport.
4 of those players also worked together during five-on-four and four-on-three drills in practice Wednesday, although Kreider was excused for private reasons.
“I believe that the fellows that took us to the numbers that you simply’re talking about are those that ought to be on the market. But we do need things to occur, too,” Laviolette said. “That’s why you have a look at it and say perhaps we’ll change it for a game and see where it goes, but those players are the players, the fellows, that ought to be on the ice to try to make a difference.
“They’ve had a ton of success. They’ve had success for us this 12 months. We’ve gotta get them back on the right track.”
Trocheck, who represented the Rangers on the All-Star Game together with goalie Igor Shesterkin, is tied for the team lead with Panarin and Kreider with nine power-play goals apiece, followed by Zibanejad’s seven.
Fox, the 2021 Norris Trophy-winning defenseman, has three with 17 assists, but no other player on the roster has netted greater than Alexis Lafreniere’s two goals in man-up situations.
“Sometimes the puck goes in the web, and sometimes it doesn’t,” Trocheck said. “We’re getting numerous possibilities that aren’t getting in, when earlier within the 12 months, there sometimes were fewer possibilities and so they were getting in.
“I believe it’s just not worrying about and avoiding questions like this. The more you concentrate on it, the more it’s gonna eat at you otherwise you’re gonna grip the stick tighter. It’s times like this at any time when you’re not scoring on the facility play, you are worried about scoring on the facility play and also you’re specializing in doing so many various things, when in point of fact, what we do typically works. So we just gotta persist with it.”
The previous time the Blueshirts faced the Canadiens, they suffered a 4-3 shootout loss in Montreal on Jan. 6, early on through the team’s 5-7-2 slide in January.
However the Rangers righted themselves with a 7-2 road win over the Senators in the ultimate game of the month before the All-Star break to ignite their current winning streak — wherein they’ve outscored their opponents 18-7 despite the poor power-play performance.
“It wasn’t a fantastic month for us, and in order that game [in Montreal] obviously didn’t go the best way we wanted it to on the scoreboard,” Laviolette said. “There have been numerous good things we did contained in the game, the goaltender [veteran backup Jonathan Quick] played a heck of a game that night, but we were left on the short end of the stick. It’s a likelihood to right a incorrect [Thursday].”
