Fatigue Rearing Its Ugly Head

The NHL schedule is always a rough one. So when the Rangers opened in Europe after a rough preseason schedule, it was expected that they would be somewhat fatigued coming back from all that travel. It showed on the ice, as the Rangers were inconsistent until they got their legs back under them, somewhere around November. Regardless of the travel, the Rangers played the fewest games in the NHL over the first two months. They played just 10 games in October, and 11 games in November, totaling a measly 21 games.

What’s lost in those 21 games is that the club played just two back-to-backs, with one being while they were in Europe. With that much time off between games, the Rangers were one of the fresher teams on the ice, and it showed as games progressed. It seemed that the Rangers were always a step ahead in the third period, as opponents grew tired down the stretch.

However December is a different beast. The Rangers have already played 9 games this month, with another 6 to go, totaling 15 games this month. That’s only six games fewer than their first two months combined. With that comes fatigue, but that fatigue is compounded with the large disparity in ice time coach John Tortorella gives his players.

We’ve seen this for a while: Torts relies heavily on his top lines, and gives minimal minutes to his fourth line and bottom defense pairing. Sometimes these players get as little as three minutes of ice time per game, but it averages to be about eight minutes for the fourth line, and ten minutes for the bottom pairing. That leaves roughly 50 minutes to be split among the top-nine forwards and the top-four defensemen.

Those minutes are sustainable for a Torts-conditioned team with the right schedule. This was very evident during the two months that followed the trip to Europe. However, as the Rangers play more games, it is even more evident that those top 13 guys are getting more and more tired with every shift played. It’s a product of the Torts system, but more importantly it’s a product of the lack of depth in the organization.

You can’t fault a coach for riding his top guys, especially when the bottom five are guys that likely will not find NHL jobs next year. But with the schedule the way it is, it is on the coaching staff to find more ice time for these guys so that the top players get their rest. Road games are tough to find extra time, but on home ice, where the home team has last change, Torts can find time to play his bottom players in favorable matchups.

The Rangers have 16 games in 32 days starting today, and with all the injuries sustained, fatigue is becoming a major player in the Rangers inability to move the puck and grind out games the way they did in the first two months of the year. However, identifying the problem is only half the battle. The other half is finding a solution. The easy answer is to play the bottom lines more often, but the hard answer is finding the appropriate time to play those guys without potentially sacrificing points in the standings.