Five greatest defense pairs in Rangers team history

When it comes to defense pairs, the New York Rangers have had their share of great duos.  Here are the top five defense pairings in team history.

Not one of the six New York Rangers defensemen who skated against the Tampa Bay Lightning  on Tuesday night was 26  years old.  Jacob Trouba was the senior citizen on the blue line, at 25  years, 245 days.  If you average the ages of the six blueliners, it comes out to 23.4 years.  That’s young.

The question is will the next great defensive duo will come out of this group?  Will it be Trouba and Libor Hajek?    Could it be Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren?  Or is it Brady Skjei and Anthony DeAngelo?

Team chemistry is the goal of every coach and there’s no doubt that David Quinn is looking for the right combinations on defense.  Before training camp started, Quinn announced that Trouba and Brady Skjei would inherit the mantle of top defensive pair.  They were friends growing up and played together in international competition. That lasted all of one regular season game.  Now, it looks like Trouba has found his defense mate in 21-year old Libor Hajek.

Against Tampa, Quinn paired two 21-year olds in Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren. The duo had played together at the World Junior Championships and their reunion was seamless.  It’s much too soon, but the Blueshirts have to hope that in this group of young players, they have a pair that will crack this list in the future.

In determining the top defense pairings, the criteria was that they had to play a minimum of three years together.  Granted, lineup changes happen and pairings are split up, but for most of the time, these top duos were a given when the lineup card was drawn up. We only considered the Rangers defense pairs since the league expanded past the original six teams.

Here are the top five defense pairing in post-expansion Rangers history.