From the ten-thousand foot view, the performance of this New York Rangers defensive group has been historically poor. Even on the nights where it’s seemingly not entirely out of control, there are moments where shots and chances are given up that make someone watching wonder if that particular defensemen (because they’re all to blame to an extent, this year) has ever played the position in an NHL game before.
With that negativity out of the way, it has been better lately as of this writing (TUE 1/7)! And while a degree of it is certainly the establishment of the centers (Zibanejad-Strome-Chytil) for the forwards, the surprisingly stable and better play of Ryan Lindgren and Marc Staal has turned a historically bad group into a league average one.