Teams always get up for their home opener and you can be sure that the Minnesota Wild will be a fired-up team tonight. That will make this game a good test for an injury-ridden New York Rangers squad. Dryden Hunt gets to make his season debut on the left side of the fourth line, replacing Vitali Kravtsov who didn’t make the two-game road trip.
This is an opportunity for Alexis Lafreniere to shine in the top six as he takes Kravtsov’s slot on the right of Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck. Last season, Lafreniere played only 44 minutes with Panarin with the Rangers outshot 28-19 and scoring once and giving up three goals when they were on the ice together.
The Rangers are carrying all 23 players they can, just about $200k under the salary cap ceiling. Any thoughts of them going with 22 players are out the window with the early season injuries to Sammy Blais and Kravtsov. Blais is skating again and is a possibility for Friday in Winnipeg. Igor Shesterkin gets the start meaning Jaroslav Halak gets the nod against the Jets.
Shesterkin has been in net against the Wild only once, dropping a 3-2 decision at Madison Square Garden. He did keep Kirill Kaprizov off the goal sheet, though the star winger had an assist. Going into his third season, Kaprizov has established himself as one of the top young players in the NHL
It’s also a rematch with his linemate, Mats Zuccarello, who has a goal and two assists in four games against the Rangers since his trade to Dallas in 2019.
Projected starting lineups
New York Rangers
20 Kreider – 93 Zibanejad – 24 Kakko
10 Panarin – 16 Trocheck– 13 Lafreniere
26 Vesey-72 Chytil – 21 Goodrow
29 Hunt – 22 Carpenter – 75 Reaves
55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
79 Miller – 8 Trouba
4 Schneider – 6 Jones
31 Shesterkin
41 Halak
Minnesota Wild
97 Kirill Kaprizov – 38 Ryan Hartman – 36 Mats Zuccarello
10 Tyson Jost – 14 Joel Eriksson Ek – 17 Marcus Foligno
89 Frederick Gaudreau – 13 Sam Steel – 12 Matt Boldy
26 Connor Dewar -23 – Marco Rossi – 21 Brandon Duhaime
33 Alex Goligoski – 46 Jared Spurgeon
25 Jonas Brodin – 24 Matt Dumba
5 Jacob Middleton – 2 Calen Addison
29 Marc-Andre Fleury
32 Filip Gustavsson
Marc-Andre Fleury has played 62 regular season games against the Rangers and boasts a 33-19-9 record with a 2.76 goals-against average. No active goalie is close to that total with the Rangers’ Jaroslav Halak second with 35 appearances. Only Martin Brodeur has more appearances (101) against the Rangers in the post-expansion NHL
How to watch & the live conversation
The game starts at 8 pm and it will be televised on the MSG Network so we get Sam and Joe for the first time in a while. The live stream will be on ESPN+.
Blue Line Station’s live conversation is active now. You can join the chat in the comments section below. We have had some issues with the auto-refresh feature and the workaround is to sort the messages by oldest, then back to newest in order to see the latest comments.
With the Yankees playoff game postponed due to bad weather, the Rangers will be the only game in town, unless you consider the Devils and Islanders season openers’ competitive programming.