No Artemi Panarin. No K’Andre Miller. The New York Rangers will be fielding a new/old look team in an effort to break a three game losing streak. Caoch David Quinn said that both Panarin and Miller were really close to be able to play, but they are getting the night off.
It’s only the second game between the Devils and the Rangers and the first since the third game of the season. The Devils have been out of action since January 31 and had their first full squad practice on Monday.
With four players still on the COVID list, the Devils moved forwards Mikhail Maltsev and Nick Merkley off the taxi squad and into the starting lineup.
There’s no word on the Devils’ starting goalie. Mackenzie is their number one goalie but he did have the COVID-19 virus and that affected his conditioning. He just returned to practice on Monday. He made 47 saves in his start against the Blueshirts in January. Igor Shesterkin wil be in net for the Rangers. He is 1-1 lifetime against the Devils.
This will be another game for Ryan Strome centering Alexis Lafrenière and Kaapo Kakko. So far this season the trio has played only 8:37 minutes of 5v5 ice times. They are positive when it comes to possession with a 54.17% Corsi For. They’ve had eight scoring chances versus five against and have been outscored 1-0 when on the ice together. However, in the one game on Friday when they started on the same line, their Corsi For was 44.44% and they were on ice for the only goal scored by the Bruins.
It will be worth watching to see if Colin Blackwell can help get Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider out of their goal scoring doldrums. Pavel Buchnevich has been moved to the third line because of offensive woes.
It should be noted that Buchnevich is playing a lot on the penalty kill. It’s a pretty remarkable turnaround for the Russian. In his pevious four seasons the most time he has played shorthanded in a season was four and a half minutes last season. This year he has already logged over 35 minutes on the penalty kill and is leading all Ranger forwards averaging 2:44 minutes shorthanded per game. In the last decade, no Ranger forward has averaged more than 2:37 per game in a full season and that was Zibanejad last season.
We’ve mentioned a few times that the Rangers are yet to win with Panarin out of the lineup.They dropped a 4-2 decision to the Islanders a year ago and lost to the Bruins 1-0 on Friday.
Finally, the powerless play is two for their last 31. One reason is that the team has yet to get a 5v3 power play. They are one of five teams in the league to not have a chance. The fact that the power play is not drawing penalties when they are a man up say something about their power play structure.
Projected starting lineups
New York Rangers
20 Kreider– 93 Zibanejad – 43 Blackwell
13 Lafrenière – 16 Strome – 24 Kakko
33 Di Giuseppe – 14 Howden– 89 Buchnevich
48 Lemieux – 17 Rooney– 12 Gauthier
55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
42 Smith – 8 Trouba
25 Hajek – 22 Bitetto
New Jersey Devils
11 Andreas Johnsson – 86 Jack Hughes – 63 Jesper Bratt
23 Mikhail Maltsev – 38 Yegor Sharangovich – 21 Kyle Palmieri
44 Miles Wood – 20 Michael McLeod – 14 Nathan Bastian
59 Janne Kuokkanen – 37 Pavel Zacha – 39 Nick Merkley
22 Ryan Murray – 76 P.K. Subban
24 Ty Smith – 28 Damon Severson
8 Will Butcher – 45 Sami Vatanen
4 Scott Wedgewood
29 Mackenzie Blackwood
Join the live conversation!
The game starts at 7pm. Television is the MSG Network and radio is ESPN 98.7FM. Join us at Blue Line Station for our live conversation during the game. The live thread is open now.