New York Rangers early season schedule spells trouble

It’s too early to panic about the New York Rangers preseason performance, but when the real games begin, the schedule is a huge concern.

The New York Rangers haven’t looked very good so far this preseason.  Then again, they have yet to field their regular lineup, preferring to give their young prospects a chance to get some NHL level experience.   That has to stop.

There is one big reason for the Rangers to give their regulars to play together with only three games left before the opener against Winnipeg.   The reason is that the Rangers’ October schedule is just plain bizarre.

They open the season at home on Thursday, October 3 and then  play on the road in Ottawa on Saturday, October 5.  They then have six days off before hosting Edmonton on Saturday, October 12.  They then have four more days off before playing New Jersey on Thursday, October 17.  That is too much time between games for the team to get any kind of consistency or rhythm.  Especially when the team is like the Rangers with one quarter of the roster consisting of new faces.

By the time they face the Devils on October 17,  the Rangers will have played only three games,  the fewest games of any team in the NHL.  That even includes Chicago and Philadelphia who are starting the season in Europe. Three teams will have played eight times and eight teams will have played seven games.   The closest  any other team is to New York is Chicago with four games on their schedule.

While the company line will be that this will give the team a lot of time to practice, there is nothing like real game action and with only those three games on the Blueshirts’ schedule, their Metropolitan Division rivals will have a great opportunity to get off to faster starts.

Washington will have played eight games and just behind them are Carolina and Pittsburgh with seven.  The Rangers will end their long stretch on inactivity with a road game against the Devils who will have had six games to get their lineup together.  The Rangers then have a match against the Capitals in Washington on the next night. Look out.

The schedule is no mystery to anyone associated with the Rangers and it will be up to the coaching staff to have the team prepared.   That’s why it is essential that the newly created Mika Zibanejad–Artemi Panarin –Pavel Buchnevich line get some time to play together (they haven’t yet).  The new second line of Filip Chytil, Chris Kreider and Kaapo Kakko hasn’t played in a real game either.

Sure, the coaching staff is trying to see how the third and fourth lines will shake out and there are still jobs to be won,  but for the team to click, they need to get these new combinations playing together.  At the rate they are going, including the preseason, the PZB line will have played only six games together by the third week of October.

The good news is that the Jacob Trouba–Brady Skjei pairing has been together twice as has the Libor Hajek-Adam Fox duo.  The bad news is we still don’t know if those combinations will work.

The schedule-makers at the NHL have certainly not done the Rangers any favors.  The schedule gets normal after October 16, but the craziness of playing only three games in 15 days to start the season could be a real problem for the Blueshirts. It’s pretty much guaranteed that  the Rangers will have to play catch up very early in the season.