FIVE weeks and 16 games of 9-5-2 hockey into his tenure, what stands out about John Tortorella’s crash course from behind the Rangers bench?
1: Well, the head coach’s oft-repeated pronouncements that he “isn’t an X’s and O’s guy,” and that the game “isn’t about X’s and O’s,” seem to be hogwash. Indeed, Tortorella appears to be every bit as much about using video to teach as was his predecessor, Tom Renney, not that that’s a bad thing.
Tortorella may encourage more instinctive play from his athletes than many of the league’s more defense-oriented coaches, and he might be a greater believer in the upside of risk/reward hockey than the individual he replaced, but Tortorella, too, has a system he teaches. It’s not freestyle hockey by any means.
Tortorella simplified his system after Saturday’s 4-3 defeat in Pittsburgh featured an avalanche of breakdowns. The correction, primarily focused on neutral zone reads by forwards when the Rangers are on the attack, resulted in an absence of odd-man rushes against Henrik Lundqvist in Monday’s 3-0 Garden victory over the Devils.
“It’s an in-your-face system that’s constantly evolving,” said Chris Drury. “We’re learning every day.”
Learning X’s and O’s from a teacher who prefers not to be burdened with that title.
2: Tortorella’s enforcement of accountability is inscrutable, if not arbitrary. His decision not to use Nikolai Zherdev through six rounds of a shootout, in which the Rangers were blanked while losing a critical point in Atlanta last Thursday, seems analogous to penalizing the entire class by keeping everyone after school because one student didn’t turn in a homework assignment on time.
Moreover, when Zherdev, inscrutable himself, by the way, committed a horrific offensive zone hooking penalty on Monday with a 3-0 lead, 5:16 into the third, Tortorella not only didn’t sit the winger, the head coach had him on for a four-on-four his first shift after coming out of the box.
The decision made in concert by Tortorella and assistant coach Jim Schoenfeld to bench Paul Mara on Saturday because of a bad pinch that contributed to the Penguins’ first goal at 8:57 of the first remains unfathomable.
Sitting Mara and freshman partner Mike Sauer meant the Rangers played the final two periods with four defensemen against a Pittsburgh team that skates, skates, skates.
Mara may or may not have made an egregious mistake, but proving a point may have cost a point the Rangers didn’t and don’t have to lose at this point. And there were Wade Redden and partner Derek Morris beaten up the middle by Sidney Crosby for the third-period winner.
3: The head coach’s plan for the power play hasn’t been executed any better than the plan endorsed by Renney, even with the additions of Morris, Nik Antropov and Sean Avery. The Rangers are 6-for-54 over their last 11 games and generally as stagnant as ever.
That stat includes going 0-for-11 on third-period power plays in the last six games, a primary reason why the Blueshirts have scored only one third-period goal in those six games (outscored 6-1), an empty-netter by Ryan Callahan in the 5-3 victory over Buffalo on Mar. 21.
4: He’s as volatile as advertised, as volatile as they come, behind the bench, on the ice, and off it as well, and that is not a bad thing either, not at all.