The New York Rangers are lucky that it is so early in the season and that they are close to other Eastern Conference teams, points-wise, in the standings. After a strong start to the season, the Rangers lost seven of their last 10 games. Even a nearly week-long break didn't help the Rangers, as they lost, convincingly, to the Edmonton Oilers this past Sunday.
On Monday, head coach Mike Sullivan was spotted tinkering around with the lineups. One of the more notable changes was putting WIll Cuylle at center on the third line, despite the winger never playing the position before. That wasn't the only change Sullivan made.
When it comes to the power play unit, which Sullivan hasn't avoided adjusting early on this season, has made yet another change. And it involves team captain J.T. Miller.
Mike Sullivan moves J.T. Miller off of Rangers' top power play unit
During practice on Monday, Miller has now been bumped down to the second power play unit, while winger Gabe Perreault gets the promotion to the top unit alongside Mika Zibanejad, Alexis Lafreniere, Pavel Dorofeyev, and Adam Fox.
This move comes as the Rangers have just a 20 percent power play success rate, which ranks 18th in the NHL. To make matters worse, the Rangers only have eight power play goals, which is 10th lowest in hockey. That's not ideal, especially since the team made a ton of investments to alter their forward group.
After practice, Sullivan was asked how Miller took the news about getting pushed to the second power play unit. Sullivan said that Miller "understands it."
"He gets it. I think he's excited about the possibilities of the units that are together right now,," said Sullivan, h/t Mollie Walker of the New York Post. "You can feel it in the energy on the ice today. I think JT has been great about it. As I said, these guys were part of that conversation.”
Miller also spoke to reporters, saying that he is fine with the move and hopes that doing so will help the Rangers get "some juice."
"We’ve been way below our standard, I think, so far," said Miller, h/t Walker.I even think when we were scoring goals earlier on we were opportunistic… At some point, you’ve got to do a little shakeup. Typically when we do that, we get some juice and try to go from there.”
Rangers need an extra jolt on the power play
The Rangers took some huge gambles earlier this year by undergoing their retool. Notably, they traded away their top scorer in Artemi Panarin, and a reliable option at center in Vincent Trocheck. They took that gamble and traded for Dorofeyev for two first-round picks, and gave him a $77 million contract. The hope was that he'd be their top scorer for years to come.
As we've seen so far, Dorofeyev has moved up and down lines and power play units, as Sullivan tries to get him going. Yet, he has just four goals through 15 games. This isn't what the Rangers had anticipated, especially since Dorofeyev has shown to put up some high danger scoring chances. But for the most part, it feels as though he's hitting the crossbar on the net more than actually getting the puck past the opposing goalie.
In terms of the power play overall, their top goal scorers with the extra skater advantage are Miller, Zibanejad, and Lafreniere, but with one goal each. That's not the best situation to be in for them. Additionally, Panarin has three power play goals through 13 games.
If the Rangers want to have a chance at making the playoffs, they will need so much more from the power play unit. Sullivan is giving this latest change a chance, and Miller seems more than up to helping him out on the second unit.
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