New York Rangers Will Face the Capitals Tonight With a Shorthanded Lineup

At yesterday’s practice, New York Rangers head coach Alain Vigneault said that three key forwards and their best defenseman would all miss Wednesday’s meeting with the Washington Capitals.

With the New York Rangers being locked into the top wild card slot in the Eastern Conference, there is no need for them to play their top guys if they are experiencing some injury problems, however major or minor they are.

And that’s exactly what Alain Vigneault is planning on doing ahead of Wednesday night’s meeting in Washington D.C. with the Capitals.

Jesper Fast, Rick Nash, Mats Zuccarello and Ryan McDonagh were all given maintenance days at Tuesday’s practice. Usually, this doesn’t necessarily mean that said players will miss the team’s next game, but in this case, it will.

Vigneault noted at his post-practice presser that he would rest his four regulars on Wednesday night. He said that all the injuries are minor and that if this was the playoffs, they would all be playing, so that’s a good sign.

The injuries are all undisclosed.

Wednesday’s Lines

Some of these lines still look really good, and then there are the other two. The Kreider-Stepan-Buchnevich line has the potential to be flat out dirty.

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The Kreider-Stepan-Buchnevich line has the potential to be flat out dirty. You got a guy in Kreider who is an excellent finisher, Stepan who is an excellent passer and Buchnevich who can do both.

We have seen in the past what the Grabner-Hayes-Miller line has been able to, and that is dominate. But as good as those two lines look, you have to worry about the Pirri-Zibanejad-Vesey line and the Glass-Lindberg-Puempel line.

The Zibanejad line has a chance to be horrible. Brandon Pirri hasn’t played much over the last month and even when he’s been in the lineup, he’s been utterly ineffective. Vesey hit the rookie wall back in December and despite making some progress in early March, he still has ways to go before completely breaking through.

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If one of the three forwards sitting out on Wednesday is able to go over the team’s final two games, Vesey could probably benefit from a rest, as his legs are probably exhausted after playing more games this year then he did in college.

The Glass-Lindberg-Puempel line just kind of is what it is: a random mish-mosh of players with different styles of play on the same line because the team had no other choice. Lindberg has been fantastic over the second half of the season, and hopefully, he can help his new linemates perform better as well.

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The defensive pairs were not announced, but I think it is fair to assume they will be the same as on Sunday night. Regardless, tonight’s meaningless game just got even more meaningless.