Blueshirts still baffled by faceoffs
Jets get opportunity to show progress by finally heating Pats
During training camp the Rangers took an innovative approach to addressing their long-standing history of abysmal faceoff numbers, bringing in retired NHL linesman Pierre Racicot to work with the team’s players who line up at the dots.
No disrespect to Racicot, but he should give the Rangers their money back.
The Rangers were a deplorable 13-for-54 (24.1 win percentage) on faceoffs in Monday’s 2-1 overtime win at Toronto. Since their 31-for-51 showing in the season opener against the Capitals, the Rangers have progressively posted worse numbers from the dots.
Through their first four games, the Rangers own a 43.4 win percentage — which ranks third-to-last in the NHL.
Brett Howden, who was traded to Vegas in the offseason, led the Rangers with a 46.6 percent faceoff-win percentage last season. The Rangers haven’t had a player break even since 2017-18, when Mika Zibanejad won 50.8 percent of his draws.
Zibanejad has taken a team-high 67 faceoffs this season, and he leads the Rangers with 25 wins. Zibanejad also has taken the most faceoffs on the power play, winning 8 of 17, as well as a team-high 25 offensive-zone draws.
Kevin Rooney has taken the secondmost draws, 42, and he has won 50 percent of them. Filip Chytil (50 percent), Ryan Strome (48.5 percent) and Barclay Goodrow (39.1 percent) round out the Rangers’ top five draw takers.
The Rangers travel to Nashville to face the Predators on Wednesday before heading back to Canada to take on the Senators for the back end of their first four-game road trip of the season.
Following Monday’s overtime win over the Maple Leafs, the Rangers improved to 1-1 in the extra period this season. It was also their third straight OT win against Toronto, dating to March 23, 2019.
“Overtime is just trading chances,” Zibanejad said Monday night. “They certainly had theirs but we had a couple as well. I feel like we just got to take advantage of your chances when you get it and we’re the team that did at the end of the day.”
Goaltender Igor Shesterkin recorded 40 or more saves Monday for the seventh time in his NHL career, and is now 9-0-0 when making 36-plus saves. His 40-save performance at Toronto marked the third time he has made 40 or more saves while allowing one goal or fewer.
FOR the Jets, a game with the Patriots usually equates to a date on death row: The end result inevitable. The Jets have lost to the Patriots the past 11 times they’ve played them. They’ve lost 14 of the last 15 and 17 of the last 19.
The last Jets win over the Patriots came on Dec. 27, 2015, a 26-20 overtime victory at MetLife Stadium.
The last Jets win at New England came in January 2011, when they stunned the Patriots, 28-21, at Gillette Stadium in the AFC divisional playoff round.
You get the picture: It has been grim to be green in this rivalry, which is really a reach to be termed a “rivalry’’ based on the onesided nature for the past decade.
The Jets, 0-1 against the Patriots already this season, having lost 26-6 in Week 2, will play their nemeses again Sunday at Gillette Stadium in what has a chance to be a catalyst to the rest of their season.
The Jets (1-4) need a jump-start, and the Patriots are the perfect elixir.
Sunday will be an opportunity for the Jets’ Robert Saleh to show his coaching chops as he adjusts to the things Bill Belichick and his staff did to the Jets in the last meeting.
Saleh and his staff are coming off a game in which they were outcoached by Falcons head coach Arthur Smith and his coordinators, Dean Pees on defense and Dave Ragone, who neutralized the Jets’ aggressive defensive front by having quarterback Matt Ryan release the ball quicker than he usually does, on offense.
Sunday will be an opportunity for Zach Wilson to show he’s not the jumpy rookie quarterback he looked like last month when three of his first five passes ended up in the hands of Patriots defenders, including his first two throws.
Wilson finished with four interceptions in that loss, essentially handing the game to New England.
Take away the Wilson giveaways and the Jets otherwise played a decent game against that day.
The Jets’ defense held the Patriots to just 260 yards of total offense and New England was just 3-for-12 on third-down conversions.
On offense, the Jets had their best game of the season running the ball, amassing 152 yards on 31 carries in what looked as close to a blueprint as there is to what offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur wants to do with his rotating-back running game. Michael Carter rushed for 59 yards on 11 carries, Ty Johnson gained 50 yards on 12 carries and Tevin Coleman added 24 yards on five carries.
Bottom line: This is a very winnable game for the Jets and it’s one that can become a motivator for the growth of this young team.
It should not be forgotten that New England is also a young team trying to find its way while breaking in a rookie quarterback. The Patriots are coming off an overtime loss to Dallas in which they gave up 445 passing yards to Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, the most ever allowed by a Belichick defense.
Sure, the trends and the numbers tell you the Jets will lose this game because they always lose to the Patriots.
But here’s the thing: This young Jets roster doesn’t have the scar tissue former players had when they saw the New England uniforms across the line of scrimmage. These guys don’t care about 11 in a row, 14 of 15 and 17 of 19.
The players on this team are too young to remember or care about the Buttfumble, the ghosts Sam Darnold said he was seeing or any of the other humiliating moments this franchise has been subjected to by Belichick’s team.
When the Jets look at tape of the loss to the Patriots last month, they’ll see a New England team they could have defeated that day, and one they surely can beat on Sunday.
When the NFL schedule was released and the Jets saw they would face the Patriots twice in the first seven games they had to figure that was a good thing. First, because the Patriots, due to how well they’re coached, get better as the season progresses more so that any other team. And second, because the Patriots are breaking in a rookie quarterback, Mac Jones, just as the Jets are with Wilson. Jones played a conversative, relatively mistake-free game last month while Wilson, perhaps too amped-up for his first career home game, became unglued early and didn’t recover until it was too late.
Wilson, of course, will have to be a lot better this time around if the Jets are to have a chance to get to 2-4 and tie the Patriots, two games out of first place in the AFC East. So, too, will Saleh and his staff.
But this is hardly any sort of mission impossible.