COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Rangers would like to have 81 more of their season-opening performance at Buffalo on Thursday.
Even so, head coach Peter Laviolette and the team are just getting started on the details of their game.
For all there was to like about that 5-1 win over the Sabres, Laviolette said he wanted to go back and focus on one of the more drastic changes he implemented in the Rangers’ system: The 1-3-1 neutral zone trap.
Despite strictly playing a 1-2-2 in recent years, the Rangers’ first official attempt at the new neutral zone strategy was pretty effective against the Sabres.
The formation is designed to create turnovers, force puck dump-ins and prevent odd-man rushes while also creating opportunities for a quick transition the other way — and that’s essentially what the Rangers accomplished in Buffalo.
“The system is going to work with any team that buys into it,” Vincent Trocheck told The Post after practice at the OhioHealth Ice Haus on Friday. “I think it helps to have guys that are good at reading plays. Guys that are intelligent. Guys that can skate. I think that’s the part of the system where you do create turnovers, sprinting to offense and having that speed, is obviously going to help.”
The 1-3-1 may be considered a defensive neutral zone strategy, but it can create a lot of offense.
With F1 on the top of the center circle, F3 on the left, F2 in the middle on the bottom of the center circle, the right defenseman on the right and the left defenseman hanging back, F3 and RD are free to be aggressive in pursuit of the puck with the support of F2 and LD.
This is usually where the turnovers happen the most, especially if teams have strong board players filling the F3 and RD roles.
When executed properly, the 1-3-1 can take away an opponent’s forecheck, which usually ends with a dumped puck.
In that case, the LD is already back to retrieve the puck and start a breakout.
The formation also bodes well for teams that have goaltenders who can play the puck when it ultimately gets dumped into their own zone.
Ahem, the Rangers only have one of the best netminders in the league in that regard in Igor Shesterkin.
Laviolette has been using this neutral zone defense since 2006, when he implemented it with the Hurricanes and won it all after the lockout year.
After doing it for so long, Laviolette said he sees the value in it.
“Mostly, it’s positioning,” Laviolette said of the aspects he wanted to focus on — and did — in practice on Friday. “If you’ve played a 1-2-2 for a long time and then you move into a 1-3-1, it’s very different. There were a ton of holes early on in training camp and odd-man rushes and some of that stemmed from offensive-zone decisions, but some of it certainly stemmed from neutral zone play the last two [exhibition] games.
“I think the more we talked and as the team broke down, it just became our group and we were able to have more structure and more meetings about it. I think the guys really started to understand it. I don’t think we’re there yet. [The neutral zone] was 33 percent of the clips in there today.”