The Rangers players may have had the day off yesterday but management was still at work behind the scenes, as they announced the signing of defenseman Ben Harpur to a one year, league minimum contract. The move may have come as a surprise to some fans, but earlier in preseason, the Rangers awarded Harpur a professional tryout with the Hartford Wolf Pack. Given the Rangers lack of depth on the back end, it made good sense to get him signed to a contract, even if he’s likely to spend the majority of the year in the minors.
Harpur has had a respectable career as a fringe depth NHL option, mainly playing in the minors. He hasn’t bounced around a ton, spending most of his career with Ottawa, Nashville most recently with a brief stint in Toronto in between. For what he is, it’s not a bad signing by the Rangers at all. He’s never played anywhere close to a full NHL season but at best has appeared in 51 games with the Senators. He’s not much of a point getter and it’s hard to really label him as a solid stay at home defender as his numbers over the years aren’t great. He is however, 6”6 and over 230 lbs which is enough to get any general manager in the league excited about. Does this signing suddenly fix the Rangers depth issues? Not really, but it’s a better than nothing signing and Rangers fans shouldn’t worry about him taking away ice time from Jones or Hajek.
Some good news on the Rangers front as they wrap up their morning skate, both Filip Chytil and Vitaly Kravtsov are not only skating, but are taking line rushes. Great signs for both players, especially with Chytil who was originally ruled out for the entire week. Unfortunately, about 25 minutes into practice, Chytil left the ice as word has now come out that he wasn’t feeling good enough to keep going and has now been ruled out as an option for the weekend. Kravtsov however, was not only taking line rush but was on the second power play unit which is a good sign that he will likely get back in the mix tomorrow afternoon.
One of the other question marks given how the skate went was whether or not they will look to get Jones back in for Hajek. During line rushes, Hajek was on the pair with Schneider but again, during power play reps, Jones was out there with the second unit. It would make sense to get Jones, who hasn’t played in the last two games this weekend, if not for both for at least one of the outings. We won’t know for sure what Gallant and the coaching staff’s plan will be until probably closer to game time but at best guess, you have to think the game against the Stars will look something like this:
Kreider - Zibanejad - Kakko
Panarin - Trocheck - Lafreniere
Kravtsov - Goodrow - Gauthier
Vesey - Carpenter - Reaves
Lindgren - Fox
Miller - Trouba
Jones - Schneider
With Dallas being the better of the two opponents this weekend, you have to think we’ll see Shesterkin get the start tomorrow and Halak in net for Sunday’s game in Arizona.
Saturday Game, New York Rangers @ Dallas Stars 10/29/2022
On Saturday, the Rangers will have an afternoon battle in big ole Texas as they take on the Dallas Stars for their first meeting of the season. As Rangers fans typically aren’t one to let things go *cringes in Potvin sucks* , one of the main storylines for this matchup will be Nils Lundkvist playing the team that drafted him for the first time. The young former Rangers who appeared in roughly thirty games with New York last season, was traded right before preseason in exchange for two draft picks, a first and a third. As Nils currently leads the Stars in assists through their last five games, you may want to lock in those Nils Lundkvist anytime goalscorer bets good and early tomorrow as he continues to look for his first as a Dallas Star.
For the rest of the team, the Stars are led by a pretty skillful top line in Jason Robertson, Roope Hintz and veteran Joe Pavelski. Rangers defensive coach Gord Murphy will look to ensure that any time that line is on the ice, Schenider and Jones/Hajek are not. With the Rangers being the away team, this won’t be the easiest task, nevertheless worth keeping note of throughout the game. One pro for the Rangers going into this one is that the Stars may be without their top defender in Miro Heiskanen who is currently listed as day-to-day with an upper body injury. Overall. Dallas is one of those middle of the pack teams that can be a threat but should also be a team the Rangers can outplay with ease at their best.
It’s no secret the Rangers have been struggling as of late and hot goaltending from opposing team’s has definitely been a part of that. Unfortunately for the Rangers, they will likely be going up against one of the best upcoming goalies around the league in Jake Oettinger. The Rangers have been peppering opposing goalies with plenty of shots in the last two games so keeping that up tonight will be important. As Gallant said after the last game *paraphrasing* an ugly goal would be real pretty right now. That needs to be the Rangers mindset on Saturday as they tend to play too much of an east/west game. Especially when the goals aren’t coming like they can, the Rangers need to focus on just getting pucks on net, through traffic, deflections, rebounds, whatever it takes.
Sunday New York Rangers @ Arizona State University… Excuse me, the Arizona Coyotes 10/29/2022
This will certainly be an interesting game to see as the Rangers will be playing in a college arena as the Arizona Coyotes are essentially a homeless NHL Franchise for the foreseeable future. I’m sorry, but no matter how you slice it, it’s hard not to look at this situation as embarrassing. We have an NHL team that is not only bad on the ice, but so bad off of it that they can’t even maintain a home arena. While the Coyotes obviously aren’t trying to win anytime soon, how do you expect any NHL Free Agent to want to sign with a team that is literally playing in a college arena. Heck, for players who were drafted out of the major junior leagues in Canada they would be downgrading in amenities like facilities, locker rooms, etc. It’s extremely wild to think about.
Going into the weekend, the Arizona Coyotes are being led by their veteran defenseman Shayne Ghostisbehere. Ghost currently has eight points through Arizona’s first six games of the season with four goals and four assists. Ghost has always been known as one of the more offensive defenseman around the league but has since fallen off just prior to leaving the Philadelphia Flyers. Along with Ghostisbehere, Clayton Keller is among Arizona’s top players, currently averaging a point a game through the team’s last five. In net the Rangers will likely go up against Karel Vejmelka who has a history of coming up big at times. The Rangers need to beat him early as they can’t underestimate the Coyotes.
Regardless of how the team does in Dallas, given the four game losing streak, the Rangers have some catching up to do and need to come into this one hungry for two points. The Coyotes are among the teams who are very clearly looking to enter the Connor Bedard sweepstakes this year and aren’t interested in winning games all that often. That being said, this holds all the potential of being a big stat night for the Rangers who can desperately use one. Goal scoring hasn’t come easy as of late, especially for the team’s top players. If the goals start coming, the Rangers have to take advantage. There’s nothing like a good stat night to boost the vibe of a team on a losing streak.
All in all, this is a big weekend on the road for the Rangers who haven’t played a ton of away games thus far this season. Historically, the team does pretty well on the road and this will be a big weekend to put that to the test. The goal should absolutely be to walk out of this weekend with four points, as long as the Rangers snap this losing streak, there shouldn’t be much cause for concern going into next week.
Chris Feldman
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