Wednesday Night Hockey. An original-six match-up, does it get any better than this? For Will Cuylle it does. One of the highly coveted Rangers prospects received news yesterday that he has been recalled from Hartford and will join the Rangers in his hometown of Toronto, Ontario. A huge moment for any young player making his NHL debut but to do it in your hometown against the team you probably grew up cheering for makes it all the more special. To counteract that move, the Rangers have assigned Sammy Blais to Hartford, but won’t do themselves any favors in terms of the salary cap in the process. With the assignment being a conditioning stint, Blais is technically being loaned to Hartford so the Rangers are still paying his salary. Not the most ideal situation, however it is the right move in giving Blais one last chance to get his game going.
While Sammy Blais has had a disappointing first half to the season, I stand by the take that he hasn’t been nearly as bad as some fans claim he has. Despite zero goals and the majority of his assists being secondary assists, he plays the game hard and has the skill set to be the player the Rangers hoped to get in him. Like Mollie Walker said on Twitter after talking to Gerard Gallant following the Rangers skate yesterday, he hasn’t been bad in the games he’s played, he just hasn’t had any luck or gotten into a groove whatsoever. The hope is that this conditioning assignment will get Blais’ confidence back as he will play top line minutes as well as minutes on special teams, specifically power play. On the flip-side however, Will Cuylle has the chance to essentially run Blais out of town if he proves to be an effective fourth line player and makes an immediate impact.
It isn’t clear who Cuylle is going to replace in the Rangers lineup tonight but it’s looking like it’ll either be Vitaly Kravtsov or Julien Gauthier. Gallant, who is typically pretty vague about announcing his lineups ahead of time, told Mollie in that conversation that it’s essentially down to those two players. Interestingly enough, he also added that he doesn’t view Kravtsov as a fourth line player and if he is the one that gets scratched tonight, it isn’t because he’s played badly. While Gallant noted that Kravtsov has played okay, he did say he would like to see him score and finish checks more.
So with those roster moves in mind, we can expect the following lineup tonight:
Panarin - Zibanejad - Kreider
Lafreniere - Chytil - Kakko
Vesey - Trocheck - Goodrow
Cuylle - Leschyshyn - Kravtsov/Gauthier
Lindgren - Fox
Miller - Trouba
Harpur - Schneider
As far as the game itself goes, we should expect a pretty even game as we tend to have when the Rangers play the Leafs. This will be the second meeting of this season between these two teams as the Rangers beat the Leafs 3-1 back in December when Jimmy Vesey had his big two goal night. Since then, both teams have stayed the course, continuing to collect more wins than losses. Toronto currently has seven more points than the Rangers do on the year and through their last ten, have gone 6-3-1. Most recently, the Leafs are coming off a 5-2 win against the Islanders Monday Night. The story has been relatively similar for the Rangers, who have had a bit more recent success with a record of 7-2-1 in their last ten and are also coming off a Monday Night win where they won 6-2 against Florida.
The Leafs are in a rather interesting situation where they pretty much already know who they are going to face in the playoffs. While they must continue to win to get there, they can already start to shift their focus to playing how they’ll need to in order to beat the Lightning. Whether or not that really affects their approach to their game tonight is up for debate but you have to think the Rangers should have a greater sense of urgency as they continue battling for that third spot in the Metro, pushing for the Devils who are now close to taking first away from Carolina. As expected for the Leafs, it’s their core four leading the charge with Matthews, Marner and Nylander all leading in goals, assists and points respectively over their last five games. For the Rangers, it’s Adam Fox who continues to lead the way, however Mika Zibanejad has stepped up and now leads the team with three goals in the last five.
In net, expect Igor Shesterkin to go up against fellow countryman Ilya Samsonov. The Leafs have been running a pretty successful goalie tandem throughout the season with Matt Murray seeing just as much of the workload as Samsonov. Both goaltenders have been great for Toronto as they are actually tied with a goals against average of 2.62 with the Rangers, leaving the teams in fifth and sixth in the league for that stat. The Leafs on the other hand have a much better goals for average than the Rangers which is something the Blueshirts defenders are going to have to be ready for. Same can be said for special teams as the Leafs power play has been very successful this season but the good news there is the Rangers seem to be finding their swagger there once again as well.
Fans should be in for quite the night as this holds the potential to have a bit of a playoff energy to it.
Chris Feldman
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