The future of the Rangers’ season will be determined starting Monday

Rosters

When the teams report to training camp on Monday, they will allowed to bring 30 skaters and an unlimited number of goalies.    That number will be reduced to 31 (including goalies) when the teams head to the hub cities.

Here’s what the 31 man roster could look like for the Blueshirts, starting with the 23 players on the major league roster:

Goalies (3)
Alexandar Georgiev
Henrik Lundqvist
Igor Shesterkin

Forwards (14)
Pavel Buchnevich
Filip Chytil
Phil Di Giuseppe
Jesper Fast
Julien Gauthier
Micheal Haley
Brett Howden
Kaapo Kakko
Chris Kreider
Brendan Lemieux
Greg McKegg
Artemi Panarin
Ryan Strome
Mika Zibanejad

Defense (6)
Tony DeAngelo
Adam Fox
Ryan Lindgren
Brendan Smith
Marc Staal
Jacob Trouba

If the team stays with those 23 players (and Haley is the only question mark), they could add eight more players to the roster for the qualifying round.   We don’t know which additional players have been invited to the training camp except for Vitali Kravtsov.  Also, there has been no word on how long Brendan Lemieux’s suspension will be when the league gets around to ruling on it.

Possibilities at forward include a number of players who spent most of the season in Hartford with brief visits to New York including Steve Fogarty and Tim Gettinger.   Players with NHL experience who spent the entire year in Hartford include Matt Beleskey, Boo Nieves, Danny O’Regan and Vinni Lettieri.

On defense, other than Libor Hajek, there are no players with NHL experience, but the question is whether the team will add rookies Yegor Rykov, Brandon Crawley or Darren Raddysh.  With only six defensemen on the NHL roster, they will need to add at least two more blueliners.

Goalie Adam Huska was spotted on Instagram practicing in Slovakia so it looks like the team will stay with the three headed monster.

The Blueshirts inked several college players after the NCAA season ended.  It’s unclear whether K’Andre Miller, Patrick Khodorenko, Austin Rueschhoff or Justin Richards will get a shot in training camp.  It may be shortsighted to burn one year of an Entry Level Contract on a series that could be over in three games.

So who will make the final roster?  In an interview on the MSG Network, Coach David Quinn said that calling this a training camp is a misnomer. He said “This is not a training camp, it’s practice. In fairness to the players, guys haven’t had a chance to get at it the way they normally do.”  Quinn singled out the players who are ahead of the game as the ones who were local and were able to begin training as soon as the league allowed it, naming Chris Kreider, Marc Staal, Brendan Smith and Artemi Panarin. He also mentioned the players from Europe who were able to skate sooner.

With severe limitations on who will be allowed into the practice facility,  most information coming out of the Phase 3 training camps will be provided by the Rangers.  Normally, the media will get daily briefings and can watch practice.  None of that will happen this year.  The only way we will know how the goaltending competition is shaping up or which players will make the final roster is if the team makes the coaches available via Zoom or other electronic means.   So far, there’s been no word on what accommodations will be made for the media so fans will know what is going on.

This all begins on Monday and the hope has to be that the information will be free flowing.  We’ll see.