Why the Rangers would fire Alain Vigneault

We’re nearing the end for the 2017-18 Rangers, one point away from playoff extinction with six games to go following Monday’s 4-2 Garden defeat to the Capitals. But the promotions of teen first-rounders Lias Andersson and Filip Chytil make this feel like more of a beginning for 2018-19.

Except, of course, for the one pesky detail of not knowing who will be behind the bench to direct the remodeled Blueshirts when this all gets underway again in September. Of not knowing what kind of system and philosophy the players we’re seeing — and, at least equally as important, the kids on the way and draft candidates being watched by the scouting department — will be playing next season.

The beginning of an influx of new talent under Alain Vigneault?

Or the end for the coach after five seasons?

There’s been nothing new on Vigneault’s status since general manager Jeff Gorton said on March 8 that the team would save that conversation and decision until after the season. Vigneault has been nothing but professional since the forewarned deadline teardown, as if there would be reason to expect anything else. The Rangers, filled with young’uns hoping to make an impression, have competed.

The Blueshirts are somewhat less experienced up front, but the Yoots have primarily taken over on the blue line, with Neal Pionk, John Gilmour, Rob O’Gara and Ryan Sproul (and Tony DeAngelo before going down with an ankle sprain) replacing Ryan McDonagh, Brendan Smith, Nick Holden and the injured Kevin Shattenkirk.

There have been mistakes aplenty in the defensive zone, which is pretty much what anyone would expect from the quartet of players skating with Marc Staal and Brady Skjei whose NHL sum experience amount to a sum of 108 games. Scoring chances have been off the chart.

But the problem is that this is the way the Rangers have looked for most of the last three years. Mistakes are no more plentiful or ghastly than those committed and allowed by the team when the four replaced veterans with total NHL experience of approximately 1,750 games were in the lineup the first four months.

Or no more abundant or egregious than two years ago when Dan Girardi, Dan Boyle, Keith Yandle and Kevin Klein, who combined for about 3,000 NHL games, were the staples with McDonagh and Staal.

The chronic issues in the defensive zone will, I believe, be determinative if the Rangers make a change. That, more than the charge that young players don’t develop under Vigneault or that the team needs a different voice, is likely to be the crux of the matter.

The adage in sports is that you can’t change all the players, so you change the coach, instead. Except that management has already changed nearly all the players over the last two years, with another couple likely on the move this summer. Indeed, only seven guys — Henrik Lundqvist, Staal, Skjei, Chris Kreider, Kevin Hayes, Mats Zuccarello and Jesper Fast — who played in the 2016 first-round defeat to the Penguins remain on the roster.

But the more things have changed in the personnel department, the more they have stayed the same in the defensive zone even as the Rangers have had three different assistant coaches running the blue line — first Ulf Samuelsson, then Jeff Beukeboom and now Lindy Ruff — over the last three seasons.

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Of course, it is not only the defensemen at fault. Ranger forwards have been shockingly delinquent in their D-zone work and coverage. Players have changed, but the system of hybrid man-to-man, with intended outnumbering at key pressure points, has remained in place. It has not been a good fit.

Over the last three seasons, with and without Derek Stepan, with and without Derick Brassard, with and without Girardi and McDonagh and with and without Yandle and Dylan McIlrath, the Rangers have allowed the third most five-on-five attempts against and the third-most shots against; have the third-worst attempts percentage; and, the second-poorest xGA, according to the numbers on corsica.hockey.

Perhaps more damning, even in acknowledging that subjectivity can be applied to defining “high-danger chances,” the Rangers have allowed more of them than every other team in the league over the last three years, according to naturalstattrick.com. These numbers merely confirm the eye test.

Pionk, denied a spot on the opening roster more by circumstance of a veteran logjam than by his own performance, has been a pleasure to watch in this late-season trial. And it should be fun to watch the teen angels get their feet wet after competitive efforts in this one.

Despite the calendar, this feels like a beginning. Except that we still don’t know whether we are witnessing the end for Vigneault.