Rangers' Jones: 'I'm rotting away' with recent scratches
New York Rangers defenseman Zac Jones voiced strong feelings about being a frequent healthy scratch over his club's prolonged skid.
"It f---ing sucks," he told Larry Brooks of The New York Post. "It f---ing sucks."
Jones will sit for the fifth time in six games when the Rangers host the Boston Bruins on Thursday night. He was a regular in the lineup before New York acquired blue-liners Will Borgen and Urho Vaakanainen, and Jones said he doesn't believe he's played poorly enough to be dropped from the rotation.
"It's frustrating when you think you're doing some things well, and it's just, you just keep getting taken out, taken out, taken out," Jones said. "I just feel like I'm rotting away a little bit.
"And it's tough. It's really f---ing tough. I mean, I'm not a 32-year-old guy collecting a paycheck. I'm a guy who wants to earn my paycheck. I need to play. I have things I need to improve in order to be a full-time player, and that's what I want to be. I want to be a guy who plays 82 games and be in the lineup every night."
Jones has notched eight points in 24 games this season with a plus-2 rating, but his underlying numbers aren't stellar since the Rangers began a miserable 4-15-0 run in late November. Despite the Blueshirts owning a 40.17 even-strength expected goals rate with Jones on the ice rate over that span, according to Evolving-Hockey, his low figure bests Borgen's (37.82%) and Vaakanainen's (31.93%).
Jones isn't the first Ranger to voice displeasure about lineup choices during a dreadful run that's dropped them out of a playoff spot. Days before being traded to the Seattle Kraken, Kaapo Kakko said he was being used as a scapegoat when the club scratched him.
The Rangers also sat veteran Chris Kreider recently and traded former captain Jacob Trouba to the Anaheim Ducks.
New York drafted Jones in the third round in 2019. He's made 95 appearances for the Rangers across the past five seasons.