Life has been good lately for the Rangers, who needed just a few weeks to escape the abyss into which they had fallen at 3-7-0. A month into the season, the Blueshirts are in a playoff spot at 8-8-0, even if that’s as much a function of the disrepair and disrepute into which the Metropolitan Division has fallen as of their own renown.
Still, entering a week in which the Panthers (on Sunday) and the Devils (on Tuesday) come to the Garden before the Rangers visit their House of Horrors in Montreal (Nov. 16), there are concerns for coach Alain Vigneault.
Perhaps the most significant concern is Michael Del Zotto, who played just four shifts worth 2:59 in the third period of Thursday’s 4-2 victory in Columbus, including only one turn in the match’s final 12:10.
Del Zotto, 23 and in his fifth NHL season, has grown more and more unstable in his own end and erratic all over the ice. His decision-making is questionable. He has turned the assignment into as much of an adventure as a job, too often skating into trouble and putting the puck into bad ice rather than make quick and safe plays.
Del Zotto’s creativity and his headman tape-to-tape passes just haven’t materialized to great effect, even as Vigneault has publicly challenged his defensemen to generate more offense and get more pucks on net. Del Zotto, who missed one game with the flu and the next as a healthy scratch in October, is fourth on the blue line in shots, trailing John Moore, Ryan McDonagh and Anton Stralman.
Perhaps some of the issues are a result of the lefty adjusting to playing on his off side with third-pair partner John Moore, but the reality is Dan Girardi and Marc Staal are ahead of Del Zotto on the left defense depth chart. That is not going to change for as long as they are healthy and Rangers.
The Rangers have little excess with which to work internally, on the trade market and under the cap. There aren’t going to be any three-for-one packages or bundling of kids in return for a veteran or a rental.
Del Zotto assuredly can be had, but the Rangers would need to receive a defenseman in return who is capable of handling the nearly 19 minutes a night on the right side that No. 4 chews up. They would need to get someone capable of handling more minutes if any of the Blueshirts’ top four were to be struck by injury.
The Oilers are itching to make a deal. The Sabres are dying to make a deal. The Flyers are desperate to do something. Same is true for the Panthers, who fired Coach Kevin Dineen on Friday because they couldn’t fire everyone else.
But there isn’t necessarily a match with those clubs in regard to Del Zotto, who has yet to grow into the asset the Blueshirts believed they had when he won NHL Rookie-of-the-Month honors as a 19-year-old in October 2009.
Here’s one for you: After scoring three power play goals in his first nine NHL games, Del Zotto has scored four more in his next 255 games. His last power play goal came on March 30, 2012, the only one he has scored in the last three seasons. He has been on the ice for three of the Blueshirts’ 10 power play goals this year, now operating at the right point of the second unit across from Moore.
Del Zotto was scratched from the Rangers’ 4-0 defeat in New Jersey on Oct. 19, replaced by Justin Falk. It remains to be seen whether Thursday’s benching becomes a prelude to a scratch against the Panthers, but there is no doubt that Vigneault and the Blueshirts need more from Del Zotto’s game.
The Rangers, who were off on Friday, did not provide an update regarding the health of Taylor Pyatt, who left the game in Columbus at 3:28 of the second period after taking a forearm/elbow to the side of the head from Fedor Tyutin.
If Pyatt is unable to play against the Panthers, the Blueshirts could insert Brandon Mashinter into the lineup but, already down a penalty-killer with the continued absence of Dominic Moore (strained oblique), it is more likely that Darroll Powe would be summoned from the AHL Wolf Pack.