Who will be the Rangers' X-factor in the Stanley Cup playoffs?

With the New York Rangers poised for a big playoff run, looking to hoist their first Stanley Cup since 1994, Frank Seravalli dives into the team and talks about who he thinks could be the X-factor for the Rangers in the playoffs.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s talk about a couple of teams who have now punched their ticket to the Stanley Cup playoffs, first the New York Rangers. They are now the third team in the Metro to receive an X by their name and as teams clinch, let’s do a deep dive. Who’s been an X factor for the Rangers Frank as we head into the playoffs? 

Frank Seravalli: It’s the kid line. That’s what really helped propel them into the Eastern Conference Final last year. Alexis Lafreniere, Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, you think back to their playoff run and those guys contributed 20% of the goal-scoring or the Rangers in the playoffs. That was a huge boost, that was the coming out party. They’ve stuck together for most of the season, can they hit the playoffs and then get to that next level again, find more consistently and find more ways to impact the game? When I look at this Rangers team they’ve got so many nice facets to it, they’ve got that top-end elite skill and talent and there’s no question about that with the star power they’ve assembled in their top six. But the one thing that kind of scares me about this team aside from their own defensive zone play, is they don’t really have an identity line. They don’t have one that is a shutdown line that you can throw out against opponents to really make life difficult in the playoffs. This kid line might be the closest thing they have to it. For their sake, when you key in on the star players that they do have in Tarasenko, Kane, Kreider, Zibanejad and that whole crew. If they get shut down by the opposition some nights, it’s going to be up to the kid line to come through for the Rangers. I think they will, my question is how big of an impact will they have. 

Tyler Yaremchuk: I really like that point about the high-end skill, the really solid top-six they have. Well, there are going to be a lot of teams in the playoffs with really good top-six groups and that difference-maker could be the production they get from the third line. You talk about the playoffs last year, that trio combined for 11 goals in 20 games. If your third line is giving you a goal every other game in the playoffs, it’s going to push you quite a ways in a best-of-seven series. Let’s talk about what could sink them though, Frank. That forward group looks like a juggernaut, but is there a weak spot somewhere on this team? 

Frank Seravalli: Yeah, it’s not critical of the six defensemen they have in their lineup I think it’s actually way more of the overall team structure in the game. The one thing that does concern me is the defensive zone structure and play. They’re not anywhere near clean enough, they’ve done a little bit better job this season in cutting down on those chances against and high danger chances specifically but still that’s the one thing that held them back last year. What it does is put a lot of pressure on Igor Shesterkin, he’s talented and that’s obviously an easy thing for him to do, but it doesn’t leave a lot of margin for error when it comes to the dips they’ve had this season. The times they’ve struggled, you can sort of directly correlate it to Shesterkin’s save percentage and I don’t say that to blame him, but it’s what’s happening in front of him that you can see the pucks in their own net. They’ve got scoring, they’ve got the offensive flair, and they’ve got the playoff experience that they’re now armed with, but can they button things up enough in their own end to be a really successful playoff team?

You can watch the full episode here…