The unheralded Rangers who might make them rethink their trade deadline needs
Trouba #Trouba
You knew the Rangers were prepared for a physical one against the Flames at the Garden on Monday not when Jacob Trouba lowered the boom on the unfortunate Dillon Dube 13:57 into the first period, but when the captain’s blue-line partner looked to come to his aid in an unremarkable yet telling tableau minutes earlier.
When Nazem Kadri took out Trouba with a hard hit just 6:17 into the match, K’Andre Miller — who is not known for physicality — attempted to confront the Calgary center twice before play moved on to the other end of the ice.
This might have become an immediately forgotten tidbit in this wild and crazy affair packed with memorable moments that came to an end when Alexis Lafreniere scored in overtime to give the Blueshirts a 5-4 victory. But it sent an early signal that the team had strapped on its hard hats and was ready to go to work. It was illustrative of a team-tough mentality that persisted through 61:37 of hockey.
As my dear colleague, Mollie Walker, wrote in Tuesday’s editions of The Post, this was a playoff-style night on Broadway. She was correct. The match featured dazzling plays and thunderous hits from Trouba that sparked a couple of melees. A clapback hit on Milan Lucic from Sammy Blais fomented another fracas.
And the Rangers, 16-4-3 over their past 23 games entering the match, but just 3-2-1 in the immediate previous six, responded with a meaningful team-wide effort. If this were Game 1 of a 13-match evaluation period leading into the March 3 trade deadline, the Rangers made a case for themselves.
To trade or not to trade
This game wasn’t only about the stars, even though Artemi Panarin and Chris Kreider each set up Mika Zibanejad for a goal with separate, brilliant, no-look backhand feeds a period apart and at opposite ends of the rink. It was also about the continued emergence of the swashbuckling Filip Chytil, whose charisma is blooming in concert with No. 72’s goal-scoring explosion.
Jimmy Vesey, who came to camp on a tryout with designs on winning a fourth-line roster spot, complemented Zibanejad and Panarin perfectly with strong work in the corners and below the hash marks. It is clear head coach Gerard Gallant favors having a responsible 200-foot player on the right side of that marquee unit. That is why Vesey, and not Vitali Kravtsov, is there.
It also raises an interesting question for general manager Chris Drury to ponder: Is Vesey solid enough in that spot for the Rangers not to have to divest themselves of a first-rounder and a blue-chip prospect or two to bring in a bigger name to assume that right wing spot?
Blais’ play may give Drury even more to consider. In his most impactful game of the season in his first night back from a conditioning assignment in Hartford, Blais was credited with three hits, including his massive open-ice hit on Lucic late in the first period. It was a good start for No. 91 in this first of a series of auditions to save his job.
If Blais and young Will Cuylle can provide physical, momentum-changing, energy-injecting work on the fourth line, as they did on Monday, then maybe Drury won’t have to surrender important assets to bulk up down the roster.
(Oh, and by the way, why anyone would throw Max Domi into the mix as a potential fourth-line acquisition is beyond me. Domi has been a disappointment everywhere he’s been. His undisciplined behavior proved detrimental to the ’Canes in their second-round, seven-game defeat to the Rangers last year.)
Should the Rangers decide to keep the 21-year-old Cuylle — whose 7:46 against Calgary represented the most ice time of his three-game NHL career — it is possible Julien Gauthier could be placed on waivers if the object is to accrue more cap space by getting the roster down from the current maximum of 23 players. Gauthier has earned a spot in the NHL, but he does not fit the mold of what Gallant is seeking in a fourth-liner.
No need to fix what isn’t broken
With all the shuffling up front, the Rangers’ top two pairs on defense have been inviolate not only this season but since the quartet of Trouba, Miller, Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren was assembled piece by piece.
Lindgren and Fox have been partners for 225 of the 237 games they have both been on the active roster and in the lineup since Lindgren’s recall from the AHL Wolf Pack 10 games into the 2019-20 season.
The Miller-Trouba bond is mathematically even stronger, the tandem together for 161 of the 167 contests for which both have dressed since Miller made his NHL debut in the 2020-21 opener.
That is a 94.9 percent rate of togetherness for Lindgren and Fox and a 96.4 percent rate for Miller and Trouba.
“It makes it real easy,” Gallant said when asked whether having these pairs were a luxury. “I keep saying that we’re pretty fortunate that they’ve played together for so long.
“You could say that K’Andre and Troubs struggled a bit the first 25 or 30 games with the goals- against, but they still played well, they played big minutes for us, they still played against the top lines. We feel good about them. We feel good about both pairs.
“When you can throw those guys onto the ice, you feel good,” Gallant added. “That’s what I think our strong point is on our team.
“There are a lot of good teams, but when you can throw the type of the defensemen over the boards all the time that we do, that makes a big difference for our group.”