First Period:
- Tye Kartye (7) Assists: Mika Zibanejad (44), Vladislav Gavrikov (21)
Second Period:
- Tye Kartye (8) Assists: J.T. Miller (35), Conor Sheary (11)
- Gabe Perreault (12) Assists: Will Cuylle (18), Tye Kartye (14)
- Oliver Bjorkstrand (12) Assists: Scott Sabourin (4), Mitchell Chaffee (1)
- Mika Zibanejad (34) (Power Play) Assists: Alexis Lafreniere (33), J.T. Miller (36)
Third Period:
- Corey Perry (17) Assists: Zemgus Girgensons (11), Emil Lilleberg (8)
Stats:
Adam Rotter:
- A strong performance from Dylan Garand against a Tampa team that sat a bunch of their players since they were already locked into the #2 seed. The Rangers played pretty well in this game and won it behind a bunch of players who are likely to have big roles next season.
- Garand has certainly earned the back-up job behind Igor Shesterkin next season. It’s only been a few starts but he seems very strong, calm and confident in net.
- Tye Kartye scored twice as a nice way to end a very successful run with the Rangers since being claimed on waivers. He’s going to have a role next season and his speed and style of straight ahead hockey is what the Rangers are trying to build towards.
- Gabe Perreault feathered one on net and he had other chances as well and Alexis Lafreniere set up Mika Zibanejad for his goal as that trio all end the season with a strong last 20+ games.
- This win does push the Rangers into fourth for the lottery odds. If Calgary beats LA tomorrow, the game matters to LA, then the Rangers will move back into third, otherwise the Rangers will pick #1, #2, #4, #5 or #6.
- And that does it for the season.
- This was not the season that the Rangers were expecting to have when they hired Mike Sullivan and signed Vlad Gavrikov last summer. Injuries played a part in this season for sure, dating back to issues that Artemi Panarin and JT Miller had in training camp, but it was obvious from the first game that this team wasn’t deep and was going to struggle to score. For a team already lacking depth and questions on defense, the loss of Igor Shesterkin for a huge chunk of the year and Adam Fox further derailed the season and ultimately led to Chris Drury declaring that the season was effectively over in mid-January and that the team was going to retool. That led them to trade Artemi Panarin and a willingness to trade Vincent Trocheck that ultimately didn’t happen. It was a profoundly disappointing season leading up to the Olympic break.
- But since the Olympic break there has definitely been a different feeling about this team. You can argue that it doesn’t mean much because there is no pressure and these games didn’t mean much for the Rangers, but the Rangers could have easily phoned in the rest of the season and they didn’t. They went young in the bottom-six, picked up a new energy from the call-ups but most importantly the Rangers finally started to see a version of Alexis Lafreniere that was consistent offensively and the potential offensively that Gabe Perreault has. We won’t know until next season whether these games were just a team playing free or whether maybe something, a foundation, a style, a process is starting to form that the Rangers can build on.
- Onto what is next for this team, there are going to be a lot of questions about whether any of the players with no-move clauses want to stay or go. Adam Fox will be the big topic based on his comments that seemed non-committal when he came back from injury, but I don’t think Fox is going anywhere this summer. If the Rangers don’t show any improvement by the middle of next year then Fox may feel differently, but that is a ways off. I don’t think Adam Fox wants to leave the Rangers but he also wants to win and if the Rangers aren’t showing a lot of improvement next season then maybe it becomes a topic then. Vlad Gavrikov doesn’t have the same connection to the Rangers that Fox does, but I think he too will wait until next season to make any decision about his future. Things may have been different if the Rangers still looked listless and miserable after the Olympic break, but I do think that their improved play has shown that maybe with a few tweaks the Rangers could battle for a playoff spot next season.
- What could those tweaks be? Well that also depends on how much more subtracting the Rangers are going to do. The Rangers have a much greater chance at returning to the playoffs next season if they roll out Mika Zibanejad, JT Miller and Vincent Trocheck down the middle, but my guess is that Trocheck finally gets traded this summer. There aren’t many free agents, Trocheck is cost controlled and relatively cheap and I think someone will end up meeting Chris Drury’s price this summer.
- So Trocheck will need to be replaced and then the Rangers will need to make a decision on the right side of their defense. Do they want to extend Braden Schneider and possibly trade Will Borgen, keep Borgen and trade Schneider or keep both? They have Scott Morrow and while he did not establish himself in anyway when he was in the lineup this season, he was still a big part of the K’Andre Miller trade and still a young player. On the left side they have the newly signed Drew Fortescue but he may start next season in Hartford and while Matthew Robertson has been a nice story and been okay, he still seems best as a spare defenseman. So there are still questions about how the defense on the second and third pairs will shake out.
- Jonathan Quick is retiring but I imagine Dylan Garand will back-up Igor Shesterkin next season.
- Where do the Rangers find more scoring will be another question. Mika Zibanejad, Alexis Lafreniere, Gabe Perreault and JT Miller are four out of a top-six. Will Cuylle probably slots in next to Miller but that is more out of necessity and their lack of depth. Alex Tuch is a potential free agent but I’m not sure his big salary and age fit with where the Rangers are right now. He will also probably end up staying in Buffalo. I could see a world where that spot is potentially up for grabs as they try and see if maybe Tye Kartye is more than a third liner or if Jaro Chmelar has more offense to his game. Liam Greentree will turn pro but the Rangers may try to have him follow the Gabe Perreault path to start the year and begin in the AHL.
- One way the Rangers could fill that slot may be determined by how the draft lottery shakes out. You can argue based on their struggles developing players that no matter who the Rangers pick they should not be in the lineup as an 18-year old, but if they end up winning the lottery and pick Gavin McKenna it may be hard to keep him out of the NHL.
- JT Miller had an extremely disappointing season for the Rangers. How much of that was being hampered by injuries all season and how much is just declining as a player isn’t clear, but he needs to be better. He seemed better and more effective post-Olympics, but the Rangers are going to need a lot more from him if they are going to improve.
- The Rangers will have a lot of salary cap space and while most teams will have a lot of space, the Rangers could try to weaponize that and acquire some veteran stop-gap players and pick up more draft picks.
- There is no doubt that this was another disappointing season. The Rangers expected to be at least a Wild Card team this season and they are instead going to end up with a high lottery pick. We saw plenty of teams this season that no one had any expectation for have success. The Penguins are back in the playoffs, the Flyers are in the playoffs, the Islanders should be in the playoffs, Boston is back in the playoffs. There is definitely a path back to the playoffs next year for the Rangers, mostly built on Igor Shesterkin and Adam Fox being healthy and Alexis Lafreniere being for real, but we’ll have to wait until September to see if they can follow that path.