Zac Jones will come back into the lineup tonight in place of Libor Hajek and Igor Shesterkin will start in net. (NYR)
The Rangers forward group will remain the same. (NYR)
Gerard Gallant spoke earlier today and said (NYR):
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- What needs to be cleaned up from the second period in Seattle, “Obviously not have that second period is the biggest thing. We played a good hockey game, second period was a stinker and let’s get by that and that is what we did. We had a good third period in the game and we lost in OT, get by that second period, eliminate that from our game tonight and we’ll be fine.”
- The Kid Line said that they weren’t good in the last game, “exactly what they said, they weren’t good last game so they’ll get a chance to rebound tonight. You move past it, it’s one game, they were frustrated, didn’t play a whole lot of minutes and when you don’t play well you don’t play as much. We expect a lot more from them tonight and they expect a lot more from themselves.”
- On how much more you could use of Panarin at 5-on-5, “I’m not looking at Artemi Panarin, I’m looking at our group and, again, we are in a spot where we think we are better than how we’re playing, that is the whole group, we addressed it and let’s go play a good hockey game. A lot of guys…again, we had a good chance to win the game in Seattle, we didn’t and we talked about it as a team, a lot of guys can be better, but you gotta move on, tonight is a new game and you gotta play better and we got a big point out of that game that we probably didn’t deserve. Individually you gotta play better as a group and then our team, coming out as a team, we gotta play a better game. I always go back to the first game of the season and we played great and we gotta find that game again more consistently.”
- On the forward group staying the same tonight, “Give these lines a chance to do it. We weren’t overly happy with the last game, but let the kids bounce back and see how they do tonight.”