New York Rangers: One more day of vacation and today’s lottery impact.

Fans of the New York Rangers have one more day to watch the scoreboard after today. That’s one more day and six more games for the Rangers to lose ground in the playoff race and gain ground in the NHL Entry Draft lottery competition.

On the playoff front, another night without any movement in the standings.  Washington lost its sixth game in a row and the New York Rangers remain nine points out of the wild card and ten points out of third place in the Metropolitan Division.

It’s in the race for a better lottery position that there’s some good news for the Blueshirts.

The Lottery Look

It was a pretty good night for the Rangers.  The evening started with ten teams below New York in the standings.  Five of them were in action and three of them got points. As a result, the Rangers dropped from 11th worst to tenth and remain six points from last place overall.

Chicago was defeated by the red hot Islanders 3-2, but it took a shootout so they still snuck out with a point.  That moved them out of worst overall by one slot.

Arizona defeated the Senators 3-2 in a meeting of lottery contenders.  With the win the Coyotes moved ahead of the Rangers with 50 points. With the loss, Ottawa is occupying last place in the NHL all by themselves.

The Red Wings also won 3-2 (four of the five games ended with that score) over the Oilers.  They now have 45 points and moved up to 6th from the bottom of the standings, an improvement of four slots.  They are also now only four points behind the Blueshirts, but they have played three more games.

In the last game for a lottery team, Carolina lost in overtime to the Calgary Flames, also by a 3-2 score and also in overtime.   The Hurricanes move ahead of Vancouver, both with 52 points, but Vancouver has played more games.

The standings (Worst is first)

Teams                  GP         W-L-OTL     PTS   ROW
1. Ottawa               50       19-26-5      43      19
2. New Jersey       48       18-23-7       43      17
3. Chicago              51      17-24-10     44     17
4. Los Angeles      50        20-26-4     44      19
5. Philadelphia      48       19-23-6      44      17
6. Detroit                51       19-25-7      45      17
7.  St. Louis            47       21-21-5       47     21
8. Florida                 47      20-20-8      48      18
9. Edmonton         50       23-24-3      49      21
10. Rangers           48       21-20-7      49      16
11. Arizona             49       23-22-4      50      21
12. Anaheim          50       21-20-9      51     18
13. Vancouver       50       23-21-6      52     22
14.  Carolina          49       23-20-6      52      22
15.  Buffalo            48       24-18-6      54     21

Who to root for

Wednesday is the last day of action in the NHL before all teams go on hiatus for the All-Star break.  There are six games on the schedule, but not a lot of opportunities for the Rangers to benefit.

Coyotes @ Canadiens – Arizona moved ahead of the Rangers with their win on Tuesday.  Montreal will be a bigger challenge than Ottawa, but if they can win they will move three points ahead of New York.

Blues @ Ducks – A St. Louis win will move them into a tie with the Rangers, but they own the tiebreaker (ROW) so the Rangers would move into 9th worst overall.  Root for the Blues.

Hurricanes @ Canucks – Both Carolina and Vancouver have better records than the Rangers, but they are only three points ahead and they have both played more games.  Root for Vancouver to win…in overtime.

So far, there hasn’t been a lot of movement in the lottery race standings.  It’s still as tight a race as it was before the Rangers’ mid-season bye week with six points separating the ten worst teams in the NHL.