David Quinn knows what he wants from the Blueshirts in 2018-19
(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Dom Renna

David Quinn knows what he has to do to get the New York Rangers back to winning games, the trick is getting his players on the same page.

For David Quinn, the goal is not to get to the playoffs the season, it is to get the New York Rangers back to having an identity.

In an interview with The Athletic’s Rick Carpiniello, Quinn talked about the role he plays in getting his team to get back to their identity.

“My job’s not to tell them what to do. My job’s to get them to do it. Every coach is telling their team they want to play fast. But our job is to get them to do it. To me, that’s coaching, getting them to do it.”

Quinn is not wrong. How many times have we heard that narrative in sports that a coach was not able to get through to their players anymore? Too many. But, Quinn seems to get that and that led to him coaching at Boston University as a head coach for five years and as an assistant coach another five years.

Getting a player to do what he needs to do to win is just one part of the equation. There is an actual game plan that has to be involved and Quinn shed some light on that to Carpiniello.

“How fast do you go from doing one right thing to the next right thing? That’s what it’s about. You’ve got to stop and start. You’ve got to do the right thing” Quinn said. “We want to have five-man gaps all over the rink. We want to take away time and space. No different than anybody else.”

Yes, this means the Rangers are going to continue to put an emphasis on being a quick team. that is just the way the game has evolved. What needs to be the difference this year for Quinn is that the speed needs to actually be there. That team speed that the Rangers took pride in over the last five years just seemed to disappear in 2017-18.

If there is one thing that Quinn wants the opposition to think about after the playing the Blueshirts is that it wasn’t an easy win. He wants his team to be tough to play against and to always compete until the final buzzer sounds off.

“When the game ends, we want the other team to go, ‘Ooof, we don’t want to play them again.’”

The tough teams to play against are the ones that usually find success in the long run. Teams that don’t just come into an opposing city and feel intimidated, that show up on a nightly basis and put their best foot forward.

That is what Quinn wants the Rangers to be. The question now becomes, how long will it take? And, will everyone buy into it? For the fans sake, hopefully, they do.

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Dominick is a graduate of Canisius College. He has covered the Rangers for the last seven seasons and the Yankees for the last four.