Ryan McDonagh swept the Rangers’ late-season awards, as the defenseman was voted Team MVP by the local media as well as the Players’ Player by his teammates on Friday.
McDonagh has missed the past four games with a left shoulder injury suffered in Vancouver on April 1, and is likely to sit out the team’s regular-season finale Saturday night in Montreal. Yet he still becomes the first defenseman to win either award since Brian Leetch swept both in 2003.
“In my estimation, he can only get better as a player,” coach Alain Vigneault said about McDonagh on Thursday morning, as his team got Friday off to travel to Montreal.
The Rangers have locked up second place in the Metropolitan Division and secured home-ice advantage for a first-round playoff series against either the Flyers or Blue Jackets starting next week. If the Blue Jackets are able to secure at least one point in their Friday night game against the Lightning in Tampa, they would leapfrog the idle Flyers for third in division and into the position to face the Rangers. And either way, Vigneault was going to make sure he does all he can to get McDonagh ready for the start of the postseason.
“He can only get better as a leader on our team, assuming more responsibilities,” Vigneault said. “He’s a great person. He’s got a real even keel to how he goes about himself. I think he’s going to become a real big part of our foundation and our team.”
McDonagh, 24, set career highs in almost all statistical categories this season, including goals (14) and points (43). He leads the team in averaging 24:49 of ice time per game, which placed him 12th in the league before play on Friday. He ended Ryan Callahan’s three-year run as the Players’ Player – the former captain was traded to the Lightning back on March 5 – and dethroned Henrik Lundqvist after a seven-year reign as the Team MVP.
One of the more revelatory aspects of McDonagh’s season is his offensive contribution, especially on the power play. Getting first-unit time on the blue line, McDonagh has two goals on the man-advantage and 13 points, good for fifth on the team. His ability to be more than just a shutdown guy was something Vigneault thought was an underutilized aspect of McDonagh’s game – which could have been a veiled shot at the way former coach John Tortorella had employed him.
“I had heard a lot of good things about him, I had heard a lot of potential there – a lot of offensive potential that hadn’t really been tapped in, and that turned out to be very true,” said the first-year Rangers coach. “There’s a guy that we started for us on our power play on a regular basis on our top unit. There’s a guy that on 5-on-5 started to jump up in the play more, be stronger on the puck and making more decisions with the puck.”
Luckily for the Rangers, McDonagh also signed a rather modest contract this offseason, a six-year deal that carries an annual salary-cap hit of $4.7 million. In the open market, he surely would be worth quite a bit more, yet his worth to the Rangers and this season’s postseason hopes is almost invaluable.
“As the season progressed, his game just went upwards,” Vigneault said. “He’s been, without a doubt, one of our better players.”