The Rangers have sent Bret Berard down to Hartford and Noah Laba will start the season with the Rangers.
The lines the Rangers are expected to debut with tomorrow against Pittsburgh are (The Athletic):
- Will Cuylle, JT Miller, Mika Zibanejad
- Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, Alexis Lafreniere
- Conor Sheary, Noah Laba, Taylor Raddysh
- Adam Edstrom, Sam Carrick, Matt Rempe
- Vladislav Gavrikov-Adam Fox
- Carson Soucy-Will Borgen
- Urho Vaakanainen-Braden Schneider
Juuso Parssinen, Jonny Brodzinski and Matthew Robertson are expected to be healthy scratches.
Adam Rotter: I really was not expecting Laba to make the team. I thought he had a strong preseason and probably deserved to make the team but I expected him to go to Hartford and play big minutes while the Rangers gave Juuso Parssinen a run of games to see if he could hold down that third line spot.
But Laba earned his spot with six points in six games and beat out Parssinen to get first crack at being the third line center. I was expecting one young player to make the roster and he was a pretty distant fourth to me when training camp started behind Brennan Othmann, Berard and Gabe Perreault. But Laba is a center and that gave him a leg up and his play kept him in training camp through the rounds of cuts that saw Othmann, Perreault and now Berard go to Hartford. I expect that he’s made the team to play and, outside of maybe a game here and there, and won’t be a healthy scratch often.
So it’s an entirely new third line for the Rangers of Conor Sheary, Laba and Taylor Raddysh while the other three lines are pretty familiar from last year.