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Game 4: NYR-NJD, Rangers kick off three games in four nights at The Rock

October 17, 2019, 7:26 AM ET [386 Comments]
Jan Levine
New York Rangers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
The Rangers play just their fourth game of the season tonight against the Devils. A extremely light early-season schedule will get busy quickly, as New York faces three opponents in the four days, finally getting back to a more normal workload. Following tonight’s match up, the Blueshirts take on Washington on Friday and Vancouver on Sunday.



As noted yesterday, the second through fourth lines have been shuffled. Artemi Panarin-Mika Zibanejad-Pavel Buchnevich remain together, at least for now. Beyond that, Brett Howden is between Chris Kreider and Kaapo Kakko while Ryan Strome skates with Jesper Fast and Brendan Smith and the fourth line is comprised of Lias Andersson joined two of Brendan Lemieux, Michael Haley and Greg McKegg. From yesterday practice, Lemieux could be the healthy scratch.

The blueline looks to once again be Marc Staal-Tony DeAngelo, Libor Hajek-Jacob Trouba and Brady Skjei-Adam Fox. Coach David Quinn has to decide who matches up against the Taylor Hall line, which is to be centered by Jack Hughes with Nico Hischier sidelined by injury. I wrote yesterday, mirroring what Larry Brooks stated, that if Trouba is your top defenseman, then he needs to be on the ice against a team’s top line. If Hajek is not viewed as up to the task, then change the duos or call up Ryan Lindgren.

Alexandar Georgiev will be between the pipes. With back-to-back games, Henrik Lundqvist goes Friday versus the Caps. Following tonight’s game, Georgiev and Lundqvist will have each played two of the first four games, which gives us a smidge of insight as to how the job share will work. That will be the case more so after the Caps contest, with Hank starting three games and Georgiev two, making it a 60/40 split.

Much of the focus tonight with be on Hughes and Kakko, one versus two. The hype has already started, where I have heard Sid and Ovi mentioned. We need to tap the brakes a lot on that talk. Two rookies, neither of whom have proven anything in the league but birth enter the league with a ton of fan fare and expectations. That said, the match up is the main reason I am attending tonight’s game, because I want to see both players and recognize their potential. But I also am cognizant of each of their status as first year rookies early in their career and growing pains are to be expected, despite their talent level.

We all have to wait to see what happens with Vitali Kravtsov. No new information came out yesterday. More speculation did but no concrete data.

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