30-14-8

The Rangers went undefeated in their 4 games, including last night’s 6-2 win against Carolina, the #1 team in the Metro division (2 of Carolina’s 10 regulation losses are from the Rangers). This pushes the win streak to 5 in a row.

The big news was the mid-week trade with the St. Louis Blues. GM and President Chris Drury worked his magic again. Last season he brought in 4 great players to patch up the team’s holes and those moves got the team to the Conference Finals. Now with the huge score of Vladimir Tarasenko (RW) and the lower-line defensive pickup of Niko Mikkola, the team has gotten stronger. Fans and those in hockey media have been saying for years that the team has needed a high-quality top line RW. After Pavel Buchnevich was traded to the Blues 2 years ago because the Rangers didn’t have enough money to resign him, it’s been a pretty glaring issue. Sammy Blais was the major acquisition in that trade and it didn’t work because he got a serious knee injury at the start of last season and he hasn’t been able to rebound this season. The Blues took him back in this trade along with a prospect and 2 draft picks.

Tarasenko is friends with Panarin and it shows. It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Breadman this happy. He got an assist on Tarasenk’s first goal as a Ranger. First shot, second shift, goal. It was nuts, which started the lead against Seattle, which they never gave up. And then Panarin went nuts last night and scored 4 goals! Mikkola is from Finland, and not only does Kakko now have a countryman right by him, they’ve played together in the junior league a few years ago.

So the Rangers’ locker room is buzzing and everyone is gelling on the ice. The power play has come back to life with Zibanejad leading the charge. Chytil, Lafreniere, Kakko or absolutely flying right now. They are all getting points all over the place! Together they are pulling off what we’ve hoped for years would happen.

If things continue like this, the Rangers are now incredibly dangerous. The skilled players are now spread out through all the lines making matchups much harder. There are way more defensive strategies opposing teams need to do now. There are goal-scoring threats all over the place.

Is Drury done? Can he make another move to shore up the 4th line even more? The trade deadline is at the beginning of March.