The Blueshirts kick off a back to back with the Bolts and Blues as just five games remain ahead of them for the 2022-23 regular season. With their playoff ticket punched and the likeness of playoff scenarios continuing to take shape, the Rangers will look to stay the course and continue to focus on playing good, solid, sixty minute hockey. Some good news for the Rangers tonight is that Ryan Lindgren, who has missed a majority of the action post trade deadline, is returning to the lineup, hopefully indicating he is back to 110% and ready to go for playoffs. There’s still a chance the Rangers could leap frog themselves into home ice advantage for round one but the most important factor in this final stretch will undoubtedly be ensuring everyone is healthy and well-rested to head into the postseason.
The Rangers are coming off a big win against Washington on Sunday afternoon where the “Kid Line” led the charge, heavily contributing to the team’s 5-2 victory. They played so well that Vince Mercogliano reported that Gerard Gallant said “he showed the whole team clips of how the Kid Line has been playing lately, using them as a positive example for the group.” One of the consistent concerns with Gallant and the Rangers organization as a whole has been whether or not “the kids” development has been handled properly. Whether or not they were being put in the right situations or being rewarded for strong performances. The fact that we’ve gotten to a point where they’re essentially setting a model for the veteran players on this team speaks volumes to me and shows that they really have taken huge strides this season. If they keep up their recent play or better yet, continue to play even better, that’s going to be a difference maker come playoffs.
Aside from the Rangers young stars shining bright on the national stage Sunday, that victory snapped a two game losing skid that will hopefully spark the Rangers to get away from that kind of lackluster performance. This back to back that they’re setting out on tonight will be the more strenuous part of this final five game stretch so if they can muster up a pair of points in these outings, they’ll be in great shape to coast through the remainder of the season, giving rests to whoever may need one. Patrick Kane for example, was given a maintenance day yesterday, something we may see much more of in the coming week, especially once the playoff picture becomes more and more clear.
As for the Lightning, they can already begin taking it easy as their playoff matchup that has been assumed for the better part of this season is now officially locked in. Jeff Veillette on Twitter shared the other day the following:
“TOR and TBL have been matched up with each other as projected playoff opponents every day since 11/27. That’s 126, 52 Leafs games, 57 Lightning games without any change in projected opponent, plus 7 TOR and 5 TBL more to go. 75% of the season with the same Round 1 opponent.”
That’s a wild tidbit of information. Many folks are calling for the NHL to consider reshaping the playoff format or at least going back to the old way of top eight teams in each conference to avoid situations like this where team’s end up knowing who they are going to play midway through the season if not earlier. Tampa also has five games remaining and likely shouldn’t worry too much about any of these games aside from keeping everyone healthy and fresh. They had a very similar record to the Rangers and in their last ten, have gone 6-4, currently amidst a three game winning streak where they have only allowed one goal.
This game could go one of two ways as the Bolts are also on the front half of a back to back. If both teams play their starting goaltender, this could be a very low scoring, goalies game. If one or both team’s decide to go with their backups, things could go a little different but again, the stakes associated with this game aren’t very high. The Rangers should have a bit of an edge as there’s a chance they could be playing for home ice advantage but again, health and playoff preparation should be the priority.
With Lindgren back in the mix and Kane expected not to miss anything other than yesterday’s practice, expect the lines to appear as so:
Kreider - Zibanejad - Kane
Panarin - Trocheck - Tarasenko
Lafreniere - Chytil - Kakko
Vesey - Goodrow - Motte
Lindgren - Fox
Miller - Trouba
Mikkola - Schneider
If it was my call, I’d consider keeping Mikkola with Fox in an attempt to ease Lindgren back into things but we don’t know specifics on his status for certain. Perhaps he has been ready to return for a while now and truly is back to 100% or maybe they’re more concerned with getting him and Fox going again. Either way, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to give that third pair a good amount of reps in this final stretch as we all know those top two pairs will be carrying a lot of weight in the postseason. I’d expect the Rangers to go with Shesterkin tonight and let Halak take St. Louis tomorrow but those decisions tend to hold similar odds as a coin flip. I’ve said it in the past, this truly is the calm before the storm so as long as the Rangers get in and out of this one good and healthy, there really isn’t much to overly stress about.
This will be the third and final regular season meeting between the Rangers and Lightning with their most recent one coming back in December in the form of a shootout loss and prior to that, a 3-1 season/home opening win for the Rangers. With the stakes low and two of the top goalies in the league potentially going up against each other, we should be in for a low scoring, tight type of game.
Chris Feldman
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