from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Systems are necessary. Adjustments are necessary. Structure is a requirement. But it is still the players who determine the outcome. At some point — and probably much sooner than later — outside fascination with Laviolette’s system will fade. And attention will be directed, as always, on the players.

As it was on the Rangers during and following Thursday’s belly flop of a 4-1 defeat to Nashville at the Garden, in which the home boys were a step and a thought slow pretty much from start to finish and lacked the battle level to overcome their sloth.

It wasn’t the system that let down the Rangers; it was the Rangers who let down the system and each other. They could not establish any type of meaningful forecheck. They had issues getting out of their own end. They were disconnected with and without the puck in the neutral zone, while yielding a pair of breakaways and nearly two handfuls of odd-man rushes.

Essentially nothing was close to good enough on this night as the Blueshirts fell to 2-2 in advance of a five-game trip out west that commences in Seattle on Saturday.

From Laviolette’s perspective, the most egregious of the numerous flaws on display was his team’s unsatisfactory compete standard. There is never an excuse for that. That’s why this one stung far more than Saturday’s 5-3 defeat in Columbus in which the team was scattered for the first 40 minutes.

“We had the same problem in Columbus where we gave up too much but in Columbus we competed hard,” Laviolette said. “We attacked the net hard.

more