The New York Rangers take their five game road winning streak to Vancouver to take on a struggling Canucks team that has three wins in their first nine games. The Canucks have lost three straight one goal games at home and desperately need a win during a seven game home stand.
A six-game road winning streak would be nice, but it’s still short of the nine-game road winning streak registered by the 2019-20 Rangers. To get that sixth win, the Rangers will have to be better than the squad that escape from Seattle with two points they might not have deserved.
It does look like Igor Shesterkin will get the start as he continues his stellar play.
It would be nice to see the top two offensive Rangers bust out with some goals. Both Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin have scored only one goal each so far this season. In their careers, Zibanejad has five goals and 12 points in 14 games against Vancouver while Panarin has scored only two goals in 12 games, though he has eight assists. So far this season they’ve been piling up assists, but they need to get on the scoreboard to take the burden off Chris Kreider.
Gallant called out the Chytil line, saying “I need to see more from that line..I didn’t like their last game. They got to play a lot better and they will be capable of a lot better than that. They had a tough game the last one.” He said that they’ve been working with them and cited the fact that they didn’t play the last seven-eight minutes of the last game because they turned the puck over too much.
Lafreniere acknowledged that they didn’t manage the puck well and it’s something they need to work on. “There’s times in the game when you can’t really risk anything…be smarter… It’s huge part of our game we need to improve.”
He also said that getting singled out by the coach was not an issue. “I think it’s normal. He wants a good game from everyone…you know when you’re playing good and when you’re not. ” He said that it motivates him “I just like to know what I’m doing wrong on the ice..so it’s good for him to tell me what to improve.”
Projected lineups
It looks like the Rangers will field the same lineup that won in Seattle. That means a second straight scratch for Nils Lundkvist with Jarred Tinordi in the lineup. Coach Gallant was firm in his assessment of Tinordi’s work versus the Kraken. “We were happy with Tinordi’s play. We won the hockey game….Tinordi’s an NHL defenseman.” He said it wasn’t a matter of getting him into a game. It did seem that Tinordi was rusty and he had some bad giveaways.
The last time the two teams faced each other was January 4, 2020, a 2-1 win for Vancouver at home. Ten Rangers are still with the team who played in that game and only seven Canucks are left from that game.
NEW YORK RANGERS
20 Kreider – 93 Zibanejad – 21 Goodrow
10 Panarin – 16 Strome – 24 Kakko
13 Lafrenière – 72 Chytil – 91 Blais
29 Hunt – 17 Rooney – 14 McKegg
55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
79 Miller – 8 Trouba
12 Nemeth – 5 Tinordi
31 Shesterkin
40 Georgiev
VANCOUVER CANUCKS
9 J.T. Miller – 40 Elias Pettersson – 6 Brock Boeser
70 Tanner Pearson – 53 Bo Horvat – 21- Nils Hoglander
92 Vasily Podkolzin – 18 Jason Dickinson – 8 Conor Garland
95 Justin Bailey – 91 Juho Lammikko – 39 Alex Chiasson
23 Oliver Ekman-Larsson – 57 Tyler Myers
43 Quinn Hughes – 5 Tucker Poolman
2 Luke Schenn – 27 Travis Hamonic
35 Thatcher Demko
41 Jaroslav Halak
This will be the first time that Thatcher Demko will face the Rangers in his four year NHL career. The Canucks might have been better off starting back-up goalie Jaroslav Halak who owns a career 24-9-1 record against the Rangers including a 2.33 GAA and .927 Sv%.
The hottest Canucks are J.T. Miller who has nine points in his last nine games and Conor Garland with eight points in his last nine games.
About the game and the live conversation
Game time is 10pm EST and it will be televised on the MSG Network with the radio call on ESPN 98.7FM. Nationally, the telecast will be on the ESPN+.
Blue Line Station will be hosting a live in-game conversation using the comments feature below. The comments have not been refreshing and one workaround is to change how the comments sort from “newest” to “oldest” and back to “newest” again. It’s been sort of working recently so we shall see.
The live thread is up now!