New York Rangers are winning for a reason

There’s no doubt the New York Rangers are hot right now but don’t expect them to cool off too much.

We are now 17 games into a regular season which has seen the New York Rangers dominate the NHL like few teams have. For the first time in their 90 year history, the Rangers started the season winning 13 of their 17 games.

It’s an extremely crazy stat, especially considering that many fans and writers closed the team’s window to win before the season even started. I have written many times how I said the Rangers were still cup contenders and that their loss in the first round of last year’s playoffs was just a blessing in disguise.

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This article is for all of the fans, writers, critics and haters that expect the New York Rangers to fall off soon at a catastrophic rate.

Don’t hold your breath.

The Rangers, for the first time in years, have a dominating offensive game. The Rangers have only averaged 3 goals a game twice since the 2004 lockout. Those years were in 05-06 when they averaged 3.05 goals per game, and in 14-15 they averaged 3.02 goals per game.

Obviously, it has only been 17 games–nearly a quarter of the season–in the books so far, but the Rangers average of 4.24 goals per game is ridiculous. The last Rangers team to average 4 goals a game in a season was the 91-92 team, which averaged 4.02 goals per game.

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I can already hear people saying “yes, dummy, but that’s over the course of a full season,” so I’ll just throw out some stats about this team’s play as it pertains to this year.

This Rangers team has scored 5 goals in a game 9 times to start this season through 17 games. The next team with the most 5+ goal games this season is the Winnipeg Jets who have 4 such games. It’s also crazy because the last team to start the season with those same numbers was the 07-08 Buffalo Sabres.

And as for why I think the Rangers will be able to keep the goal scoring at an elite level–while I don’t think they will continue to reach their 4 goals per game average–is because they have what this team has been missing for years now that has killed them in the playoffs each year; forward depth.

The Rangers have four lines that can put the puck in the net, and that is extremely dangerous. We have seen in the playoffs time and time again that usually, the two teams that play each other in a series’ top lines kind of cancel each other out and the bottom lines are what decide the series.

Also, this team can easily create defensive mismatches since they have the kind of depth that they have. A team could put their top defense pairings against any one of the Rangers lines, but who is gonna deal with the other lines that go up against that team’s third pair? Exactly.

These two tweets from @RangerSmurf tell it all

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And all of this isn’t even mentioning how consistent the defense and goaltending have been thus far. Ryan McDonagh has been a stud so far this year. Marc Staal has actually looked pretty good out there and Dan Girardi has actually looked like an NHL defenseman. Nick Holden has been playing better of late after a horrendous start. Kevin Klein has been very steady as always.

Also Brady Skjei is exceeding expectations defensively and offensively. Skjei is tied for 4th among all defenseman in assists and leads all rookies in that stat as well.

Henrik Lundqvist is also rounding back into stellar form as he has a 8-1 record with a 1.89 GAA and a .936 SV% in his last 9 starts.

This is the 2016-2017 New York Rangers that we Rangers fans have always dreamed of. Yes, it’s early, but all the telltale signs say that It’s gonna be one hell of a ride.