After seeing the Rangers go 0-for-9 on the power play Wednesday night, Ranger Pundit had some suggestions:
Tom Renney insists on sending out 'the usual suspects' on every power play. What's more there is no originality. Renney recognized it. "As you get frustrated with the power play and things go on, you start to try to manufacture things that aren't there." The PP Five insist on playing tic-tac-toe with their passing. Rarely is there a good shot from the point. The point? Straka? Rozsival? Poti? Malik, maybe. Tom, Why not get drastic and put Jagr at the point. He might make something happen from there. Its worth a try. The opposition doubles up on him even on the PP when he is down low. Let them try and double team him from the point.
I think it's a good idea. A couple of years back the Caps shifted Peter Bondra to the point on the power play and paired him with Sergei Gonchar. Combined with the checking line of Halpern-Dahlen-Konowalchuk -- responsible for goading the opposition into plenty of penalties -- the move was particularly shrewed on the part of then-Caps head coach Ron Wilson.
One major difference is that Bondra has (had) a bomb of a shot from the point. Jagr favors the wrister much more (you could count on one hand the number of slap shots he took as a Cap), which wouldn’t be as effective from way back there as it is from the half-boards. I think the solution is much simpler – shoot more. Quit trying to make the pretty play all the time and bomb it from everywhere and drive the net. In my opinion, you need Jagr and his hands around the net as much as possible, not at the top of the zone. But I could be wrong – I’ve been wrong on Jagr several times before.