Larry Brooks is providing player evaluations daily in the NY Post, an exercise that began the evening of March 22. The order is by last name, and while he is not giving a grade, he is giving a sort of high-level assessment. Since it's my hope that we will have hockey, I thought it might be interesting to take one or a few aspects of his daily column along with his closure - the latter in italics - and provide my view, then receive yours in the comments. I will try and do this daily, and have covered Lias Andersson, Pavel Buchnevich, Filip Chytil, Tony DeAngelo, Jesper Fast, Adam Fox, Alexandar Georgiev, Brett Howden, Kaapo Kakko and Chris Kreider, Brendan Lemieux, Ryan Lindgren, Henrik Lundqvist, Greg McKegg, Artemi Panarin, Igor Shesterkin, Brendan Smith, Marc Staal, Ryan Strome, Jacob Trouba and Mika Zibanejad. Today, it's coach David Quinn.
Quinn:
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that all coaches would like to be renowned for their mastery of X’s and O’s and their ability to install and adjust systems. No doubt that is an essential part of the job.
But coaching has always been about much more than that. It is also, and more so, about the ability to teach. That takes the ability to connect with pupils, whether they may be fifth-graders or professional athletes. Coaching is also about the ability to motivate individuals to create a common bond with their teammates. That takes the ability to communicate.
And coaching is about building relationships. This isn’t the past, where coaches could survive and perhaps thrive by being martinets. At least not in pro sports and not in the NHL. Not these days. Relationship-building takes compassion. It takes humanity.
And that is where I begin with David Quinn, the growing and evolving coach of the Rangers. I begin with the humanity, his commitment to creating bonds with his players that extend beyond the dimensions of the rink. Passion is one element of character; compassion is something else. Quinn has both.
He is tough and he is caring and he has been able to maintain that balance while making the jump from a life well spent in college hockey to the pros. His ability to create relationships with his players is not incidental to his success behind the bench. It is not a footnote to his story.
In this era, a coach who screams as much, as loudly, as consistently and as pointedly as Quinn does at practice, better have another kinder, gentler way of communicating with his team and his players in order to produce the desired results. Quinn does. It is not quite accurate to suggest that benching/scratching players hurts the coach as much as it does the players, but it is in the realm of possibility.
The summer addition of Artemi Panarin accelerated the rebuild. The Rangers would be something very different without him. Because even while signing Panarin and trading for Jacob Trouba, the Rangers did not attempt to find a shortcut through the rebuild process. Kids did not sit so veterans would get more minutes in an effort to win games. That would have been difficult, anyway, given the demographics of the roster and lineup. It was common for the Blueshirts to dress nine players aged 24 and younger. The future was never sacrificed for the present, but winning was never a secondary objective. Developing players is distinct from turning the NHL into a development league. Quinn has understood that from the start.
We all know Quinn favors more of a north-south, smashmouth, get-to-the net approach to the game than much of his personnel is naturally comfortable with playing. To that extent, it has been a bit of taffy pull with some of the talent. It has taken a lot of cajoling and, in some cases (cough, cough, Pavel Buchnevich), it has taken the occasional benching to get the point across. Some points need to be continually reinforced with some players more than others.
It hasn’t been a 100 percent success story. Quinn wasn’t 100 percent on with Lias Andersson, whose breakdown with the organization has at least some measure of shared responsibility. And I’m not sure the coach was 100 percent on this season with Kaapo Kakko, whose rookie year was filled with fits and starts and a larger dose of frustration than most hockey people would have envisioned.
But the coach’s work with Buchnevich has produced results. Same for his handling of Filip Chytil. Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren blossomed as rookies and Tony DeAngelo, benched/scratched a couple of dozen times two years ago, emerged as a blue-line offensive force this season. Mika Zibanejad has evolved into a star playing for Quinn, a coach who rides his horses.
And I don’t care. When Mike Keenan was hired in 1993, he may have had the seemingly impossible job of attempting to end the-then 53-year drought, but I do not believe there has ever been a singularly more challenging assignment for a Rangers’ coach than the one Quinn was tasked with this season in effecting the transition from franchise icon Henrik Lundqvist to the next generation of goaltenders.
The coach acted decisively. And though the whole thing has left a sour taste in many mouths, Quinn made the move from The King to Igor Shesterkin and Alex Georgiev without creating a damaging goaltending controversy.
There were still too many nights on which the Rangers seemed flat and way too many dead periods within games. That’s obviously at least partially on the coach. The team went into funks in which forechecking was all but nonexistent.
The defense-zone structure and coverage improved significantly from Year 1 to Year 2 of Quinn’s tenure, but I have never quite seen anything like the way the team consistently cedes its blue line on the rush while back-back-backing in on its own net and thus leaving acres of wide open space and good ice for enemy attackers. If that’s the plan, well, it’s time for another.
The Rangers are young, learning and developing and are far from a finished product. But they are competing and contending for a playoff spot at the same time. A large part of that is Panarin. A large part is Zibanejad. A large part is Shesterkin.
And a large part of that is David Quinn..
Quinn entered the season a question mark in the minds of many Rangers' fans. Despite progress made by the team this year, he has yet to fully convince all that he is the right man for the job. In my view, I think the team has the perfect person to lead the squad forward and to the next level. Is he perfect? No. Does he have the right qualities to succeed in this town? In my opinion, yes.
The weakness Brooks' highlight are no question check marks against Quinn. The defense constantly ceding the blue line. New York coming out flat and having dead spots in games hat lasted for minutes or periods. Quinn's handling of Andersson after a good training camp and Kakko. Plus, as pointed out to me in the blog comments, his retention of Lindy Ruff, which is another hot button topic.
All of the above are true. But look at all the positives in terms of the growth by individual players. Then add in the teaching, the constant teachings. The desire not to accept mediocrity or allow bad habits to become the norm. His connection with the players despite the tough love - which at times looked a bit over the top - was evident throughout the season.
The three-headed goalie situation still has yet to be fully resolved. Plus, maybe not enough respect or information was shared with Henrik Lundqvist. But on balance, a situation that could have torn the squad apart was handled with sensitivity and for the most part, the right goalie was played. Maybe not in every game, but overall, fairly well.
Quinn still has at times too thin of a skin. Plus, his deficiencies still need to remediated, but they should be for the most part, fixable. New York is in a position to take another step forward next season. To me at least, they have the right man at the helm behind the bench.
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