2:30 PM: Gerard Gallant spoke after practice today and said (NYR):
- How do you look at the first quarter of the season, “It’s okay….not great, okay.”
- What needs to be better, “you can look at a lot of different things, you could say…I think we played pretty good hockey for the most part, to be honest with you, I think our record could be better and then I look at it and say that we’ve played 21 games and five of those were back-to-back and I don’t think any other team had five games back-t0-back and a lot of travel. Not making excuses, it’s okay where we are at. It could be better, but it’s okay.”
- What are you looking for with Panarin, Zibanejad and Kreider together, “he’s a great player for us and I just wanted to shake things up a little bit the other night and I thought for the 25 or whatever minutes it was they played together it looked really good. Just a little adjustment and if we don’t like it we can switch it back, it’s a real easy adjustment to switch it back.”
- Are you seeing chemistry develop between Panarin and Trocheck, “Yes and no at times. They are playing fine, but I expect more, I think they can be better, there is no doubt about that. It’s 20-games and chemistry doesn’t happen over night, sometimes it does. It hasn’t been great, I’m not disappointed in either player, I just think it can be better. We switch it around a little bit and Kreids and Mika have been real good players for us and Bread, obviously, puts up big numbers. Just give it a try and see what happens.”
11:42 AM: At Rangers practice on Friday the lines being used are (Brooks):
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- Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider
- Jimmy Vesey, Vincent Trocheck, Barclay Goodrow
- Alexis Lafreniere, Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko
- Sammy Blais, Ryan Carpenter, Julien Gauthier, Vitali Kravtsov