11-2-1

The wins keep coming. This has been a tremendous start to the season as we get close to a quarter of the way through. It hasn’t all been good, but this team has shown tremendous resistance and determination.

With 23 points the NYRs are third place in the league, second in the Eastern Conference, and first in the Metropolitan division.

Adam Fox, Filip Chytil, and Igor Shesterkin remain out on injury. Jonathan Quick returned last night and kept the team in striking distance to win over Columbus in a shootout. Ryan Lindgren was unfortunately injured last night, hopefully it isn’t serious. Louie Domingue played between the pipes the game before to give Quick the time he needed to heal up and he did ridiculously well. No one thought the backup goalies would stand up so well (or so soon in the season). Very fortunate in that regard. I expect Shesterkin to be back to play against the Devils on Saturday.

Panarin continues his record-setting season. Points in every game so far, one more and he sets the franchise record. Rising tides raise all boats and in our case, that boat is named Alexis Lafreniere. He’s on the best streak of his career tallying his first 3-point game against Minnesota and then another 2 goals and the game-winning shootout goal last night. He’s at 7 goals, which he didn’t hit until February last season. Will Cuylle continues to impress, he’s well on his way to having a terrific rookie season. Erik Gustafsson has got to be the best deal in the NHL, he’s constantly making great plays and is starting to get points. Will and Erik have stepped up to cover for Chytil’s absence in the best ways possible.

Trocheck and Kreider have been coming up clutch as well. The special teams continue to dominate. The Power Play is second in the league at well over 30%! Penalty Kill is like 10th in the league, I think only one was allowed in the last 5 games. Overall the defense has been strong. Face-off wins are at an all-time high thanks to Trocheck, Zibanejad, and Bonino. The amount of stupid penalties is way down too.

Now for the rough edges. Way too many turnovers. We’ve gone from bad starts to bad second periods. The playmaking just disappears. They get trapped on defense for a long time and get tired and when a clear comes, the puck isn’t flipped out far enough in fear of an icing call, so the other team picks it up in the neutral zone right away and they zoom right back in, trapping the Rangers with none or one man getting a line change. They don’t try to skate it out, there is no plan leading into it, so they get stuck on defense for long stretches of time. It takes them forever to stop doing this, depending on a stoppage of play in the neutral zone to get a break.

Underperformers: Zibanejad, Kakko, Goodrow, Jones, Wheeler. Zibanejad, Kakko, and Goodrow are ice-cold in the points department. They’re getting away with it because of other exceptional players but they need to turn things around fast. Their lack of production on their chances is one of the reasons why the Columbus game was way closer than it should have been. Jones and Wheeler are currently the front runners in making costly mistakes. Jones is still a rookie but it’s disappointing. Hopefully, he’ll make strides in getting comfortable at the NHL level and improve sooner rather than later (I think it’s a minimum of 6 more games until Fox is expected back). Wheeler has finally broken his drought in goals and assists but he’s got to boost both of those something fierce to make up for his slow and sloppy play. Too frequently he looks like a boat anchor out there.

These 5 days off are happening at a good time. This odd break in the schedule (it’s not a bye week, that’s months away for All-Star weekend) is welcome as it could mean Chytil and Lindgren won’t miss any games this week and they can iron out the problems that have cropped up with focused practices. In Peter Laviolette we trust!