1/19/23: Kreider is in tonight, Blais is out and Shesterkin is in net. (NYR)
1/18/23 | 11AM: The lines being used at Rangers practice today are (Brooks):
- Chris Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, Kaapo Kakko
- Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, Vitali Kravtsov
- Alexis Lafreniere, Filip Chytil, Barclay Goodrow
- Sammy Blais, Jake Leschyshyn, Jimmy Vesey/Jonny Brodzinski
Julien Gauthier was also skating. (Brooks)
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4:18PM: Gerard Gallant spoke after practice and said (NYR):
- It looks like Mika is going to have a new left wing, “hopefully, we’ll see.”
- How long will it take Kreider to get back up to speed, “He’s only been out a week, it hasn’t been that long, so I’m not worried about that. Hopefully I’ll find out today that he is ready to go and he looked good today, skated hard. We’ll find out.”
- Is there anything to take from the first Boston game this year, “that is too far, we don’t worry about that game. We get ready for them and we know we’re a good hockey team, too. We’ve played really well lately and it’s a good challenge and test and you get ready to play those games. You get pumped up for them and hopefully we’ll come out and play our best game.”
- On being disciplined against the Bruins, “You gotta play your game (knock on wood). We don’t take a lot of penalties, we are one of the least penalized teams in the league and we gotta do the same thing, play hard, play fast. You respect your opponent, but you still gotta play your game and when we play our game, the way I like, the style we play, we’re a good team. Just gotta do it for 60 minutes and know you are facing a good team and you can’t worry about them, you gotta worry about our team.”
- How did Lafreniere respond to being up with Zibanejad for those games, “He was fine, good. He knew that when Kreids got back that Kreids was going back there. He played fine, had a couple of chances to score, didn’t go in the net. Played fine.”
- On only scoring one 5-on-5 goal while Kreider was out, “It’s not because of him, trust me (smile). When guys like that aren’t in the lineup you really miss them and you miss his speed and the way he gets on pucks and he’s a great player on our team. He had 52 goals, what’s he got? 19, 20 this year? So he’s an important guy, but when he’s out you put somebody in there and try to do the job. Definitely we like our team a lot better when he’s there, he does a lot of good things, adds a lot of speed and is a powerful guy in front of the net.”
- Is there anything else you are seeing related to 5-on-5 scoring, “No, not worried about it. We won three of the four games and the other team didn’t score much either. It’s those type of games and if we are losing those games 5-1 I’m disappointed. But there was great goaltending in some of those games and we didn’t give up a lot of chances in the last game and even the Montreal game. We gave up more chances than we like, but it’s one of those games you have and it’s an off-night.”