Alain Vigneault will “C.”
The Rangers’ coach said on Thursday he will wait until the end of training camp to name a team captain to fill the vacancy created when Ryan Callahan was sent to Tampa Bay at last year’s trade deadline.
The club advanced to the Stanley Cup finals with Brad Richards in the role of de facto captain, but Richards is now in Chicago, having signed with the Blackhawks following his buyout by the Rangers.
“There’s no doubt in anybody’s mind that Brad was a real strong force,” Vigneault said at the practice rink while his players underwent physicals in advance of Friday’s first on-ice sessions. “Now I want to see who takes more responsibility and who’s going to step up in a leadership role.
“I’m anxious to see that.”
Ryan McDonagh, the 25-year-old defenseman, is the leading candidate to get the sacred scarlet letter, but the coach has chosen to defer both the decision and the announcement for another couple of weeks.
“I see in our team some real strong possibilities as far as being captain, but I also see that this is a new year and we changed some pieces to the puzzle, so I want to see how it unfolds during training camp,” Vigneault said. “I think that all teams have a core leadership group, and it’s not just up to one individual — the captain — to be the leader. It has to be a group effort.”
Marc Staal is a holdover alternate captain. Dan Girardi has been the unofficial third alternate the last few seasons, and wore an “A” on his jersey after Callahan was traded. Marty St. Louis was the Lightning captain before coming to New York and Rick Nash was the Columbus captain before his 2012 trade to the Rangers.
“The captain of the team has to have the power to influence players in the right direction by example, by the way he conducts himself,” Vigneault said. “He is an extension—along with his assistants—of the coaching staff.
“The core values and the standards we are trying to establish, when we are not in the room, they’re the ones that are pushing it and making sure that everybody on our team does it the right way,” said the coach.
This, of course, will be Year 2 of doing it Vigneault’s way, which means fast, up-tempo, quick-shift, Point A-to-Point-B hockey. Last year, the coach and his team had to overcome a training camp during which the Rangers were charged with learning and implementing a new system even while traveling out west for four exhibition matches and setting up shop for about a week in Banff, Alberta.
The 2013 training camp slogan/motto was worn on their club-issued T-shirts. It was “Clean Slate,” a reference to the regime shift to Vigneault from former coach John Tortorella. This year’s T-shirts were not in evidence on Thursday, but Vigneault said that “clean slate” still applies.
“There is a clean slate, meaning that the roles and the lines and the duos that worked last year might not necessarily work this year,” he said. “So that’s why you have training camp to take the opportunity to try out a couple of experiences to see how they work out.
“To tell you the truth, if you look at our season last year, and I’m trying to turn the page and focus on this year, we didn’t get our lines together, we didn’t get the roles and the way that players fit properly until around Christmas,” he said. “I’m confident this year because I know the group and the players more that we should be able to get it done before that, and that’s something that should help us have a better start.”
When the Rangers convened on Thursday, it was three months and two days after their exit meetings in the wake of their excruciating five-game defeat to the Kings in the Cup finals. It marked the second such short offseason in four years for Vigneault, whose Canucks lost the 2011 final in seven to the Bruins.
“I would say this is exactly the right length as far as a break in the summer. I think this is perfect,” he said. “For the last three weeks to a month I’ve been chomping at the bit to get back at it. And I’m getting the same response from all the players I’ve talked to.
“I like the enthusiasm and the energy level this group has right now.”