The Rangers returned to the ice for Day 1 of Training Camp 2.0. Mika Zibanejad channeled his inner Jake Taylor, a theme that was prevalent Monday. Lines and pairings were the same as when the season ended.
Lines for the first practice were the same as the season ended. This isn't a big shock, especially when you factor in what coach David Quinn said post-practice below. New York looks likely, barring a major unforeseen circumstance, to use these trios and pairings on August 1.
Kreider-Zibanejad-Buchnevich
Panarin-Strome-Fast
Di Guiseppe-Chytil-Kakko
McKegg-Howden-Gauthier
(Lemieux is rotating as he will be suspended for part of the round. PDG gives the third line a little defensive ballast and a bit of grit and bite)
Smith-Trouba
Lindgren-Fox
Staal-DeAngelo
(Smith is basically on defense permanently now and is no longer viewed as. forward fill in)
Shesterkin
Lundqvist
Georgiev
(Put the first two in any order you like. A final decision will be made over the next two-plus weeks. Right now, it's 1a and 1b)
K'Andre Miller is in camp but he is ineligible for Phase 4 or game action. Miller's, a first round pick in 2018, signed his ELC in March, but it won't begin until the 2020-21 season. The NHL is allowing teams to have one player of this sort in camp and team president John Davidson saw the benefit of having it be Miller to help accelerate his learning process, which is a smart move.
"It was told to us we were allowed to bring one player that could come to your camp, work out with your camp, and then would not be able to travel to Toronto to the hub city," Davidson (see full media discussion below) said. "So we talked about it. You can never have enough defensemen. We're going to have scrimmages as the training camp works along here, and he's a perfect fit for us. … This is an ideal time to get him here to help him get himself acclimated to how we play the game."
NHL allowing one non-roster player to participate in camp. That is why Miller is here with NYR.
Mika channeling Taylor. This is the attitude they should have, which looks to have permeated the whole team. But as a I tweeted yesterday, "If they put a cardboard cut of Glen Sather in the locker room with 19 pieces to remove, I may need to change my fandom :)"
Mika Zibanejad, asked for the Rangers mindset coming back since they were were considered a rebuilding team:
"Win the whole thing. We came back. We're not here to just participate and just be another team. We want to win. We're here to win."
Quinn spoke to the media after practice. One key aspect he touched on was how he - and presumably the coaching staff - is not viewing this as training camp. Rather, it's to get ready for the playoffs.
On how the practice groups were split, “this isn’t training camp, we are picking up where we left off and I want that to be crystal clear to everybody here. This is not training camp, we are trying to win a Stanley Cup. We really liked our team when this ended, we want to give people an opportunity to find their way.”
On the face of it, this is understandable. Deeper though, this means that the Black Aces - including Vitali Kravtsov - have no real shot at cracking the lineup, which to me is a mistake. We know the playoffs is a battle of attrition, so depth is a key determinant of advancing. In advancing, Kravtsov is hopefully a major piece for the future, so giving him every chance to succeed and reinforcing his position in the organization - based on him playing well enough to deserve a chance - also should be a goal during this period.
New York Rangers Blogger • 
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