It’s Rangers game day and Hispanic Heritage Night at the Garden as the Blueshirts are up against the San Jose Sharks with a familiar face at the helm! David Quinn, Gerard Gallant’s predecessor, is now the head coach of the San Jose Sharks who are 0-5 to start the season. While that may not be much of a threatening stat, quite the opposite in fact, the Rangers cannot take the Sharks lightly as they are looking to tighten up the defensive parts of their game all while keeping the wins coming. Additionally, the Sharks are going to grow more and more tired with each loss they collect. You have to think they are going to come out hungry tonight in hopes of putting an end to this losing streak and what better night for the team to get their new coach his first win against his former team?
It’s no secret the Sharks are in the early stages of a rebuild as they have already made a big move in that direction, selling Brett Burns in the offseason. The identity that this team has had in recent history is now more or less approaching the wrong side of 30. Meaning for the most part, their top players are no longer in their prime or are just falling out of it. There was tons of speculation of Tomas Hertl, who is arguably the Sharks top player, moving when his contract was in its final year, but an eight year extension put those talks to bed and proved he was here to stay. Aside from Hertl, players like Timo Meier, Kevin LeBanc and Nick Bonino who have been with the team for quite a while now, can be trade deadline candidates moving forward as they all have either one or two years left on their current deals.
With the way things are going so far in San Jose, the Sharks could look to be in the Connor Bedard sweepstakes but until the holiday’s come and go and there is still time to figure out where teams stand, the Sharks are going to look to win games and tonight will be no exception. Their five losses have come from Nashville (twice), Carolina, Chicago and the Islanders. All pretty decent teams with the exception of Chicago. Tonight will be game number two on the Sharks East Coast run as they are coming off a 5-2 on Long Island the day before yesterday. Amidst the familiar names and shifting identities of this team, Evgeny Svechnikov, brother of Carolina’s Andrei, will be one of the names to watch out for as he’s leading the team in goals through their first five games.
On the back end, two of the bigger names that come to mind when talking about the Sharks core veterans are Erik Karlsson and Marc-Edourd Vlasic. Outside of those two, Mario Ferraro is a name to watch out for as he is one of the pieces the Sharks will look to build the future of this team around, currently leading the team with assists at three. In net, the Sharks have two very capable goalies in James Reimer and Kaapo Kahkonen but luckily for the Rangers, their offense seems to be in tip top shape right out of the gate this year.
More on the Rangers end, it looks like Ryan Carpenter and Vitaly Kravtsov have made good enough progress to be full participants in Rangers practice. With the two of them ready to get back in the mix, the Rangers had a tough decision to make regarding the Rangers roster. While NHL teams are able to carry 23 players, if the Rangers hope to have any salary cap space when the trade deadline comes around, they had to make some room. Even by only shedding a contract that’s less than a million dollars, because of how the salary cap works, they have the potential to accrue about four million dollars by the time the trade deadline comes by trimming their roster to 22. This concept left Dryden Hunt the odd man out, getting put on waivers with intentions of being assigned to Hartford.
It should really have really come as a big surprise to Rangers fans that Hunt would draw the short straw here. The Rangers are more or less on their final chance with Vitaly Kravtsov and sending him to Hartford would pretty much put a final end to that relationship. Ryan Carpenter has a history with Gallant, is a veteran around the league and has helped the Rangers out big time in the face-off dot. Not to mention, that fourth line of him, Goodrow and Reaves has looked pretty good. Lastly, no matter what your thoughts on Ryan Reaves are, there’s a zero percent chance he’s ever getting sent to Hartford, which leaves Hunt as the only option. As of nine o’clock Thursday morning, it doesn’t appear that any teams have claimed him and hopefully that will remain the case. Hunt is a great depth forward and while it sucks to see him leave the team, it’s a good problem to have too many players capable of playing at the NHL level. Assuming he does clear waivers, he will join Gustav Rydahl and Julien Gauthier in Hartford for what has the potential to be a really good top line in the AHL.
For tonight, don’t expect to see Kravtsov back in the mix just yet. Gerard Gallant has been very satisfied with Alexis Lafreniere on the right side of the second line and doesn’t want to make too many changes as things have been working well so far. With that in mind, we can expect the following lines that were noted from yesterday’s practice:
Kreider - Zibanejad - Kakko
Panarin - Trocheck - Lafreniere
Goodrow - Chytil - Blais
Vesey - Carpenter - Reaves
Lindgren - Fox
Miller - Trouba
Jones - Schneider
Expect Igor Shesterkin to have a big bounce back performance coming off from a four goal night against the Ducks earlier this week. It’s rare for Shesterkin to have anywhere close to an off night and even more rare for it to last longer than a game or two so look for him to have a big night for the Blueshirts. With all the talks about going up against David Quinn for the first time, who notoriously did not play the kids in his stint with the Rangers, you would love to see a big night from the kids, especially Kakko and Lafreniere. They’ll absolutely be two to keep an eye on as the Rangers have a great opportunity to get back on a win streak and to keep San Jose out of the wins column.
Chris Feldman
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