Mike Sullivan’s plead to Rangers amid Artemi Panarin trade & 4-game skid originally appeared on The Sporting News.
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To say that the New York Rangers are going through a rough patch is an understatement. They are dead-last in a very competitive Metropolitan Division and are six wins along with eight points behind the seventh place New Jersey Devils. After just having traded Artemi Panarin to the LA Kings, Coach Mike Sullivan and Co. had to go up against a division-leading Carolina Hurricanes. What did he have to say after the game?
New York HC outed emotions after rough loss
The Rangers lost to the Hurricanes with a 2-0 score line. It was not much of a surprise because no one was running the offense after Panarin was traded away. However, there was a huge disparity on the ice in terms of performance. It looked like the Hurricanes were suffering more from their own mistakes rather than the effort of New York. The Rangers only got 16 shots on goal while the Hurricanes had an overwhelming 42 shots on goal.
Clearly, this drew out a certain emotion from Coach Sullivan. He outlined all of them after the shutout loss, via Dan Rosen of NHL.com.
“My message to the group tonight was I will acknowledge that we’re in a little bit of a difficult circumstance and none of us really want to be in this position or have any sort of enjoyment or fulfillment in this position that we are, but the reality is we are where we are. I’m trying to be understanding of that as their coach and do our best as a coaching staff to support these guys and push them through the process. I thought tonight we lacked a certain competitive spirit that just is simply unacceptable on our part, and that was my discussion with them,” the Rangers coach said.
The Rangers were also plagued by penalties. In the majority of the second period, Vladislav Gavrikov spent four minutes in the penalty box while Vince Trocheck had to be in there for two minutes due to cross checking. Furthermore, the shots that New York took were not the most diverse and not a lot of them were treated with urgency.
Clearly, this will be a year that signals that they are going to rebuild. There will be specific needs for them to meet in the offseason and the NHL Draft. Until then, the Rangers might hopefully listen to Coach Sullivan such that they could draw in more experience in competitive situations for future seasons.
