Despite the negative words he received, the New York Rangers didn’t appear to have a problem with his play. Alain Vingeault played him a fair amount of the time both in hen refular season and playoffs.
Stepan takes up a large part of the cap salary, making $8 million a year. For this amount of money, he should be producing more points per season.
In the 2016-2017 regular season, Stepan recorded 55 points through 81 games played. This included 17 goals and 38 assists. In addition, he posted a +/- rating of +19.
Looking at these numbers, you wouldn’t think that he played poorly, and he didn’t.