2:57 PM: Gerard Gallant met with the media following practice today and said (NYR):

• On Ryan Lindgren’s status, “you know we’re not going to rush him back. When he’s ready, he’s ready. He’s doing good, full practice, everything is going good, but when he’s ready to come back, he’ll come back, but we’re going to make sure.”

• What are you looking for in the games after you clinch, “you gotta play them the same way, go out and play hard and compete hard and be ready to play. That is the tough part of it. I was a player a long time ago and when you’re in these situations you try and get ready to play for 60 minutes, sometimes it doesn’t happen like the last couple of first periods and then we played the game and ended up winning both hockey games, but it’s tough when you start like that. You gotta get mentally ready to play as much as you can and guys, you know, you look at the standings and, again, we’re in third place right now, there are a couple of big games coming up and see where it goes, but see where it goes and just got to…it’s more mental than anything else right now.”
• It’s not like you have the roster flexibility to rest anybody, “no and there is no need to rest anybody, to be honest, nobody is really tired right now, but there is not a whole lot of that flexibility right now and that is good, that is a good thing.”
• What would it mean for the local area to have all three teams make the playoffs, “I don’t really care about the other two, but as long as we’re there (big laugh). But no, I know what you’re saying and I think it’s great. The biggest thing that coaches look at is whoever is going to be in those spots, they’re all going to be good hockey teams. Years ago you used to pick 1 and 16 or 1 and 8 and say we know who is going to win that series. That doesn’t happen anymore. We just played Carolina back to back games, they are first place in our division, they were two good hockey games. Two one-goal games and battles. You go play…we haven’t played the Islanders in a long time, but they beat us two of the three games we played and they are battles. No matter what team you are going to play, it’s going to be a battle and it looks like we’re going to play NJ right now. It’s a 35-minute bus ride to there and it’ll be interesting and a lot of fun, but, again, I don’t really care who we play, it’s going to be a tough series no matter who you play.”
• Does clinching allow you to experiment with certain things before the playoffs, “might happen, but, honestly, I’m pretty happy the last ten games. What are we? 8-2, 7-2-1? I don’t know, but it’s something like that. You don’t want to tinker and try to be too smart, because things could backfire too, so overall it’s been pretty good. There are things to work on, once you know who you are going to play you get more time with your prescout and prepare for that, like they’ll do for us, no different. There are still 9 games left to play and you gotta get focused and be ready to play and when you’ve got some practice time you can work on a couple different things.”
• On getting production from different players on different nights, “we better, that is what hockey is all about. We’ve got 21 players on our roster and The Kid Line was real good the other night, I can’t call them The Kid Line anymore (laugh), the so-called third line was really good the other night and it was good to see. You gotta get people playing throughout your lineup, score some big goals, Goodrow’s line played pretty well and did their job, so you get a little scoring from everybody and you got to get a lot of defense from everybody. I’ve liked the way we’ve played the last ten games.”
• On Vincent Trocheck being good on faceoffs, “we always talked about, you know, we’ve had trouble over the years here on faceoffs supposedly. I mean, I don’t pay a big amount of attention to it. In the d-zone I worry about it more than anything else, but I think Trocheck’s won a lot more faceoffs for our team. I think our team as a group was much better on faceoffs, the whole group of them. But Trocheck is a really important guy for those faceoffs and Mika can win them on his backhand, too. And you look at the other two guys, Goodrow and Fil and they’ve both gotten better, too. It’s an important part of it, especially in the d-zone, for me and when you win those offensive zone faceoffs and when you’ve got Kreider and Kane and Trocheck on the ice they can make some of those plays. When you win faceoffs in those areas you can get some set plays off it.”
• Do you look at faceoffs in the playoffs more, “d-zone, for me is really important. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you want to win as many as you can everywhere, puck possession and all that, but as coaches, I think we want to make sure we are winning more in the d-zone and getting breakouts off faceoffs in the d-zone. I know they are all important, but the d-zone are important ones for coaches.”

11:13 AM: Ryan Lindgren is a full participant in Rangers practice today. (Brooks)

The lines being used today are (Stephenson):

• Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Vladimir Tarasenko
• Chris Kreider, Vincent Trocheck, Patrick Kane
• Alexis Lafreniere, Filip Chytil, Kaapo Kakko
• Jimmy Vesey, Barclay Goodrow, Tyler Motte