Sam Carrick has been away from the Rangers lineup for the last two games, welcoming the birth of his new baby boy. First of all, congratulations to him and his wife, but the personnel decisions in his absence have left some wondering why the Rangers' coaching staff made the decisions they have made. Nicolas Aube-Kubel has been the one to come in and replace him instead of Brett Berard, who looked significantly better during this season.
The reasons for including Aube-Kubel are theoretically sound. He's a Stanley Cup champion, and filling in directly on that fourth line looks like a better fit down the middle since Berard hasn't played center at the NHL level. However, it's not been uncommon for Jonny Brodzinski to play the fourth-line center role, allowing the Rangers to move their best players to the wings on either side of their deadly trio down the middle. It's not a certainty that the Rangers would have success, but it is a different look.
Instead, Berard has been sitting in the press box with Urho Vaakanainen and Calvin de Haan, and it isn't a good look for the development of Rangers prospects. He's not going to get better at eating popcorn in the rafters; he's only going to get better at playing games. With the Rangers playoff hopes hanging by a thread, letting him gain experience playing in these high-stakes games seems much more logical than sitting him.
He was sent down to the Hartford Wolf Pack earlier in the year, which indicated that maybe Peter Laviolette didn't value him as a fit in this Rangers system. That would be a problem, given how well he has tracked. This could indicate that Laviolette values experience over youth, with players like Brennan Othmann and Gabriel Perreault coming into the equation soon. In that case, there might be more significant issues here.