Jacob Trouba isn’t playing his best hockey right now. The captain of the New York Rangers struggles, just like all of the Rangers, as they’re currently just fifth in the Metropolitan Division. The rangers were one of the biggest positive surprises during the last season but haven’t built on that during this autumn.
Trouba is, for the first time in his career, playing with the ”C” on his chest, but he’s received criticism for how he’s played. Many also think he hasn’t stepped up for the team as a captain. When the Rangers played against the Edmonton Oilers this weekend, Leon Draisaitl celebrated a goal by knocking the stick out of his hand.
The captain didn’t retaliate against Draisaitl, which made fans outrageous. Last week, Ryan Reaves left Rangers in a trade with the Minnesota Wild, and many fans now feel like Trouba has to step up and do some of the ugly work on the ice. And letting an opponent troll you without taking some kind of retaliation isn’t a great look.
Last night, in the Rangers’ matchup last night against the New Jersey Devils, Trouba had a bad game again.
Trouba did some questionable defensive work when Devils tied the game at 2, as he was caught out of position to leave Yegor Sharangovich wide open.
Trouba often plays a hard game and isn’t shy about handing out massive hits. Sometimes it works great, but against the Devils, it just went wrong. As Devils’ captain Nico Hischier skated with the puck through the neutral zone, Trouba was going hard to take him down.
He went for a massive body check – with his elbow and everything – but… completely missed. How Trouba managed not to hit Hischier, we just don’t understand, but he did, and we can imagine how humiliated he felt as he quickly had to get up from the ice.
To land a massive open-ice hit was perhaps just what Rangers and Trouba would’ve needed right now. But we’ve definitely seen better attempts for it than this.
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