Takeaways from the 2019-20 schedule

With the New York Rangers season just about three weeks away, it’s time to take a deep dive into the schedule to see what they are facing.

It is worth taking a deeper look into the 2019-20 New York Rangers schedule to see if there are any potential potholes or reasons for false expectations.  Though this season’s schedule is pretty standard, as usual there are few oddities.

One factor to note is that the Rangers could get off to a fast start due to a soft October schedule.  That doesn’t last long and November and December will be tough. For the second straight year, the January schedule is very light due to the CBA mandated bye week and the All Star Game and that will result in a brutal month of February.

The longest road trip of the season is four games and that happens twice, both times in December.   There are a couple three game road trips late in the season.

The longest home stand is a five game stretch in October and there are two four game home stands, one in February and one in March.

The weirdest scheduling concerns the Islanders. The Ranger don’t play them until January 13th, the 45th game of the season.  They then play them three times in eight days.  The last game against the Isles will be on February 25.  That is just weird.  If the Rangers are lucky, Mathew Barzal will sprain his ankle on January 12 and will miss all three games.

Back-to-backs

They play 13 sets of back-to-back games, meaning that those are guaranteed to be split between Henrik Lundqvist and Alexandar Georgiev.  Last season, the Rangers didn’t do too well in their 11 back-to-back sets.  They never swept the two games, losing five times and splitting six others.

The second game of a back-to-back schedule is a good method of rating a team’s conditioning.  While the Rangers won the second game only twice, of their nine second game losses, four were in overtime or shootout for a second game record of 2-5-4.

There are two extended breaks in the schedule, one in October and the other in January for the official bye week and the All Star Game.

The Rangers play the most on Saturdays, 16 games in all.   They have 15 games on Thursdays followed by Tuesdays and Fridays with 12.  Rounding out the days of the week they have ten Sunday games , nine on Mondays and the lightest day on the schedule is Wednesday with eight games.

There are 12 day games on the schedule.  Last season they played 11 matinees, winning only three and losing eight though five of those losses were in overtime.

Let’s start with a month by month breakdown.