Coming off of a week in which the New York Rangers came back to earth, the team will play four games in six days including a swing up to Canada for two.
Well, the New York Rangers hot streak had to stop eventually. While both of the losses last week were discouraging for different reasons, it’s important to keep the greater context in mind: This is a young team held together with duct tape and super glue. David Quinn has done an admirable job early on keeping this group of players engaged and motivated.
Coming off of two losses to divisional opponents the Rangers will play the Ottawa Senators twice, the Montreal Canadiens once up in Quebec and come back to Madison Square Garden to play the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday night. These games all present various challenges with different types of talent in each.
That being said, here’s a round up of all the important blue line station content from last week
- Patrick Laine of the aforementioned Jets recorded a five-goal game against the St.Louis Blues last week. Steve Paulus took a look at times that a player did it for the Rangers
- The Staff shared what they were all thankful for this Thanksgiving, Part I and Part II
- Steve Paulus presented a case that the Rangers are very much in the playoff mix because of where they stood on Thanksgiving day based on historical trends
- Danny Jones covered where expectations for Filip Chytil should be after his five-game goal scoring streak
From outside the Blue line station network:
- Larry Brooks of the New York Post laid out the difficult situation facing Jeff Gorton regarding Kevin Hayes’ future with the organization
- Brett Cyrgalis of the New York Post spoke to several hockey minds from around the league about where the Rangers are this year and their chances for success, shockingly they’re not all that surprised
Stats roundup:
- After two straight losses, New York fell from first in the Metropolitan Division all the way down to a tie for third with the New York Islanders
- The Rangers sit in the middle of the pack at 16th in goals for and 21st in goals against
- The team’s save percentage of .916 is .07 percent higher than the league average of .909
- Chris Kreider currently leads New York in points with 20 including 12 goals, only four less than he had all of last season in which he missed 24 games
- Of all the rookies, Brett Howden leads the way with 13 points who has nine assists on the year
- Henrik Lundqvist sits at 16th in the NHL in save percentage at .920 percent
- Speaking of the Swede, he ranks third in the league in win shares at 4.0, meaning that the netminder is responsible for five of the team’s 12 wins
- Jimmy Vesey with 12 points in 24 games is on pace to eclipse his total of 28 from last season sometime around January
Injury report:
- Defenseman Adam McQuaid still has no timetable for return from a lower-body injury suffered against the Chicago Blackhawks almost a month ago
- Cody McLeod will be out four to six weeks with a fractured hand suffered during a fight against the Islanders on Wednesday
- Pavel Buchnevich is about three weeks away from returning from a fractured hand
- Mats Zuccarello’s designation for Monday’s game is unknown but could play
Later today we’ll get you all set with a deeper look into the matchup with the Ottawa Senators