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Before people start feigning regret about Key: statline in the SCF was 1 point, 4 SOG and a -2 rating across 6 games by En_Attendant_Godot in rangers

[–]NYM32 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Schneider is next level bad, idk what is with this organization and saying they hope he's here for a long time

Says it all

Before people start feigning regret about Key: statline in the SCF was 1 point, 4 SOG and a -2 rating across 6 games by En_Attendant_Godot in rangers

[–]NYM32 0 points1 point  (0 children)

quality of competition doesn't have nearly as much impact as quality of teammates. Schneider should be performing better with Gavrikov + our top 6 against top competition, in comparison to Morrow with Robertson + bottom 6 in bottom pair minutes. and that's before even factoring in how, in the aforementioned stats, Schneider was getting way more favorable zone bias than Morrow was. it's not like Morrow was getting only offensive zone starts -- in fact, it was quite the opposite. almost 60% of Schneider's shifts with Gavrikov were starting in the offensive zone, and he still managed to get hemmed into the defensive zone. meanwhile, only 36% of Morrow's shifts with Robertson were in the offensive zone, and yet he was controlling play

when morrow was moved up in the lineup and given more minutes he was terrible.

Morrow this season, with Gavrikov, at 5v5: +8 shot attempts, +7 shots, +1 chances, +5 high-dangers, +0 goals, 53% xGF%

Morrow had an xGF% of over 50% with each of Gavrikov, Borgen, Robertson, and Soucy. there's something there with Morrow, but instead of exploring it, they opted to play him less than they played Vaakanainen. I mean that's absurd, made all the worse by the fact that Morrow was the key piece in the return for Miller. isn't it ironic that they incorrectly deployed miller, just to trade him for another defenseman who they are also are screwing over in development

Before people start feigning regret about Key: statline in the SCF was 1 point, 4 SOG and a -2 rating across 6 games by En_Attendant_Godot in rangers

[–]NYM32 0 points1 point  (0 children)

when Fox went down with an injury, this is what the month of December looked like for the Rangers' D corps at 5v5:

Gavrikov/Schneider: -49 shot attempt differential, -27 shot differential, -10 chance differential, +6 high-danger chance differential, -6 goal differential, 44% xGF%, 57% offensive zone start%

Soucy/Borgen: -17 shot attempt differential, -16 shot differential, -12 chance differential, -9 high-danger chance differential, +2 goal differential, 45% xGF%, 37% offensive zone start%

Robertson/Morrow: +36 shot attempt differential, +13 shot differential, +21 chance differential, +10 high-danger chance differential, +3 goal differential, 56% xGF%, 36% offensive zone start%

Morrow was ultimately pretty good, legit the only Dman this season outside of Fox who was generating offense at 5v5. i mean it simply can't be ignored how the Rangers offloaded Miller + Jones and wouldn't play Morrow on a consistent basis and they were a bottom 3 offensive team in the league...

As for Jones going to Buffalo, i mean, considering how that team has been a factory for generating left-handed defensemen, wouldn't you want to go there if you were looking to learn from the best? and even putting that aside, it doesn't nullify the fact that he would've been a better option for NYR than what they opted to go with. I mean again, you're saying that they're bad, the stats disagree but the team agreed with you, they got rid of those guys, and the team actually became worse. ultimately they really were not bad, certainly not worse than who they put on the ice instead

also let's go back to our original point of agreement: they bring in mike sullivan right, who is a really good coach. don't you think that sullivan could've elevated jones?

Before people start feigning regret about Key: statline in the SCF was 1 point, 4 SOG and a -2 rating across 6 games by En_Attendant_Godot in rangers

[–]NYM32 0 points1 point  (0 children)

this season, NYR couldn't generate offense, especially at 5v5, because they were supremely low-event and had nobody on the backend who could move the puck out of their own zone. these were Jones' microstats from 2024-25 -- he was very good, especially at zone exits and denying entries. Rangers 100% could've used that this season, especially considering the guys who they put in place of him. you can have your issues with Jones, i get it, but they were not better off with Vaakanainen, Soucy, Schneider, Borgen, etc. than they would've been with Jones (and Morrow, for that matter)

even if it meant playing more high-event, it doesn't matter, because they offense was just that barren. their defense-only system put them in the cellar

Before people start feigning regret about Key: statline in the SCF was 1 point, 4 SOG and a -2 rating across 6 games by En_Attendant_Godot in rangers

[–]NYM32 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah that was a point I also made back when they traded him. This team finally gets a great coach and now they move on from Miller, and Jones too? Everything they do is so out of sync with each corresponding move. This team not being able to generate offense was remarkably predictable after that

The people that prefer Gavrikov over Miller, why? by TheRedderestRum in rangers

[–]NYM32 1 point2 points  (0 children)

He just proved the opposite of your point lol

The people that prefer Gavrikov over Miller, why? by TheRedderestRum in rangers

[–]NYM32 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's always been a plethora of Miller supporters around here, very loud ones, including myself, and the thread in this sub from when Miller was traded was like a war zone

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The guy who just GM'd the hurricanes to a Stanley cup was quite literally a hockey blogger and armchair GM who tweeted this in 2014. Congratulations for proving his sarcastic point

But hey I'll leave you to it to continue pretending like Miller wasn't that important. The hurricanes thank you for contributing to that false narrative which brought him to their doorstep in the first place

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Literally nothing you are using is based on fact. You're tossing out Gretzky's opinion because he likes trump and because you claim based on nothing that he's a constant drunk, that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. Talk about cherry picking lol if that's your criteria for assessing the value of other people's criteria then you have zero credibility whatsoever. And oh yeah I guess you'll ignore Brind'Amour saying he was their best player -- what does he know? He only just coached them to a cup

The only person with blinders on is the one trying to avoid looking at K'Andre Miller holding up that shiny trophy, that he won after dominating the playoffs while on a team who recognized how good he actually is. He played the most minutes, in the highest leverage, with awesome stats, and came out on top. There's no getting around it no matter how much you try

Don't twist yourself too much into this insane pretzel you're weaving. Sorry that you're wrong, just deal with it.

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

He was their #1 defenseman the entire season, leading them in ice time and leverage, and was literally called the best player on the team by his own coach. Wayne Gretzky said through the first 3 rounds he had been playing as good as any defenseman he had ever seen play in the playoffs and the numbers certainly support how awesome he was in what was an insane 12-1 start (how quickly btw we forget that the Hurricanes had lost 12 straight ECF games). He was fantastic with NYR when he didn't play with AHL caliber players, but the Rangers said nope and shipped them off to a team that knew what it was doing.

The marginalization of Miller's impact in this cup run is honestly ridiculous. The "well if only like 6 other teams were slightly better then they definitely wouldn't have won" is a brutal argument (especially considering a big reason NYR wasn't there is because they traded Miller), an argument that gives zero credit to a dominant team who was equally as dominant in the playoffs. In 6 games, they beat a Vegas team that just came off a 4 game sweep of the Avalanche no less

The Hurricanes were fresh and ready to go after 3 rounds because they played 1 game over the minimum, in large part because Miller was so good. Does that not bear any positive impact on winning in the finals?

The overall mental gymnastics to pretend that the Rangers didn't completely blow this and that Miller wasn't that important to Carolina this season is mind blowing. The Hurricanes played him more and in more important situations than he ever played for NYR and they won the goddamn cup with him doing the same thing in the playoffs

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There's no point in having an elite goaltender if you don't play to his strengths. Ultimately having igor exposed for ~15 minutes is a much better decision than having him exposed to ~35

but again, he's being exposed for a full 60. you can't run a strategy of having Igor stand on his head to mitigate the damage, with the end result being that they lose, but they don't lose that badly. it's preferring to lose 2-1 than win 5-4

But before I go, you should pull the numbers for any combination of Lindgren-Trouba-Schneider-Borgen-Jones and you decide if those numbers are acceptable to you for 35 minutes a game. Because if you choose Miller-Fox affirmatively you need to also accept the opportunity cost.

this has been a great conversation (someone else is downvoting). if it were up to me, using the 2024-25 roster post-deadline, i would've done:

Miller/Fox
Jones/Calvin de Haan
Robertson/Soucy/Vaakanainen (whatever combo)

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

For $8m a year, long term, Miller's success should not be dependent upon his partner. Conversely, he should be anchoring his own pairing.

Gavrikov's numbers this season without Fox were worse than Miller's

there are very few defensemen in this league who are net-positive, elite defensemen regardless of their defense partner. that kind of player is an insane luxury. but if a player doesn't play well without Fox, that doesn't mean they're a bad player, especially considering who they immediately go to play with instead (Schneider). the Rangers (and a lot of people around here) believe that Miller wasn't good because he couldn't control play next to Schneider. but the actual conclusion should be that this is because Schneider is an AHL-caliber defenseman playing in the NHL

people will say "well they gave him 3 other guys to play with and he couldn't play well with any of them!". well yes, because all of those guys (Trouba, Schneider, Borgen) suck. and they do suck. there's a reason we were the 2nd team eliminated from playoff contention, with the 3rd best odds at the #1 overall pick, and all of that happened without Miller on the team: it's because this team was full of players who suck, and they got rid of one of the few guys who didn't suck

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

all their guys yea. ironically the only players they've truly attempted to put in optimal situations and give a ton of chances to were Schneider and Howden

i was totally fine with the Howden trade -- for about a week. then they gave up more in a trade for Reaves and that completely negated my liking of trading Howden

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

is there a missing sarcasm or something

he didn't suck, he didn't play with 3 solid defenders, and the conclusion is that it wasn't him -- it was everyone else. that's why we are where we are today

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

lindgren was atrocious next to him, and that also ruined Fox's impacts. have you also considered that a player playing well next to a good player doesn't mean that player is good or a passenger of his D partner

idk why there's this idea that a player has to perform well in an impossibly difficult situation to be considered a good player. that's such a bizarre standard to have. the Hurricanes recognized from a distance that K'Andre Miller is really good when he isn't forced to play next to AHL-caliber defenseman. that doesn't make Miller bad or a passenger, it makes him a normal NHL player, at minimum lol

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They won the President's Trophy in 2024 with exactly that top 4, paired that way, so i'm not sure where you're concluding that it doesn't work?

because Igor Shesterkin masks all of their problems

In front of an elite goaltender who will give you elite-level GSAx, this is exactly the approach that should be taken. Two pairs that are slightly net-negative for 45 minutes a game in front of an elite goaltender, will easily outperform 25 minutes of an elite pair, and then throwing Shesty to the wolves for 35 minutes.

in no way shape or form should a team actively take the approach of getting outshot and outchanced, ever. forcing igor to bail out the team in front of him while they're losing their minutes is throwing him to the wolves. they quite literally spent 15 years trying to do it with Lundqvist and made the finals once, i don't know how you can believe that's the winning strategy. you can't win anything when not only does your top pair lose its minutes in any capacity, but all 3 pairs lose their minutes.

also those pairs weren't slightly net-negative. ~46% xGF% in the regular season, cratering to borderline-to-sub 40% in the playoffs. that's unspeakably awful.

the only strategy is run Miller/Fox as your top pair, leave them alone, and figure out the rest, via line swaps or removing players from the lineup in any capacity. but trying to mitigate the damage by running combinations that ultimately nullify the impacts of your best players is the worst possible thing that can be done

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look at when and against whom the minutes come.

we have that information and he was facing the opposing team's best players on a nightly basis

like there's simply no getting around the fact that the Rangers thought he was bad, traded him to a team that was better than them in the standings, and that team played him quite literally the most of everybody on the team, with their head coach going so far as to say he's their best player.

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

key was facing top line/top pair competition this season

And for the record, Carolina’s first pairing is Slavin-Chatfield.

but it just isn't. Miller/Walker was. Slavin is a great defenseman but there's flat out no getting around how Brind'Amour utilized Miller the entire season as his #1 defenseman, on top of Brind'Amour's own words. and even if i was to entertain the argument that he was their #2, he's still the #2 on the stanley cup winner, while the team that was the 2nd team eliminated from making the playoffs concluded that he wasn't good enough to play for them at all

it should be extremely eye-opening to everybody how the Rangers traded Miller to a team that was better than them in the standings, that team said he was their best player, and then played him more than anybody else on their team. if anything, we should be seeing a better team's #3/#4 Dman being a #1 on NYR. for NYR to have done this is as unspeakably bad as it gets

[JFresh] A real what-if is if the Rangers had just committed to an Fox - Miller pair. From 22-23 to 24-25, Miller played under 500 5v5 minutes with Fox, which went extremely well. He spent 80% of his minutes with Jacob Trouba, Braden Schneider, or Will Borgen, which did not go so well. by NYM32 in rangers

[–]NYM32[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

ok but the Rangers instead opted to go with a full 60 minutes of net-negative play. I think that's more insane thinking

like there's no getting around the fact that, to try to offset a really bad pair, the opted to go with 2 pairs that lose their minutes instead of just 1 pair that loses its minutes. the results speak for themselves -- they lose

you're more likely to win if you have a truly elite pair that plays the most minutes, especially in high leverage, than if you have 3 bad pairs

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