The Rangers kickoff a two-game road trip Thursday in Arizona. New York comes in off their 4-3 comeback win over the Senators while the Coyotes have lost five in a row and are 13th overall in the Western Conference. Following tonight's game, the Rangers face Colorado on Saturday before heading back to New York to face the Sabres on Tuesday.
Henrik Lundqvist is making progress recovering from the flu, but is unlikely to go today. As a result, Antti Raanta, who was brilliant the final two periods Tuesday and carried New York earlier in the month, will be between the pipes. Following the game against Buffalo, the Rangers will face Philly on the road the following day, so you would expect Raanta to see one of those two games.
The offensive slumps that I highlighted on December have rolled on. Back then, I noted that Mats Zuccarello, Derek Stepan, Chris Kreider, Brandon Pirri and J.T. Miller all had hit the skids. Fast forward three weeks and it's been a mixed bag. Since then, Zuccarello has a goal and eight assists while Stepan has four goals and six assists and Kreider five goals and three assists while serving as a line much of the 10 games in that stretch, On the flip side, Pirri has just a goal and an assist, both coming against New Jersey, while also serving as a healthy scratch in two games while Michael Grabner has just one goal and one assist in 10 games. The absences of Rick Nash, for part of this stretch, Mike Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich have hurt the offense, especially the line arrangements, so each of their returns hopefully will help.
Miller, I will get to below, and will touch on Jimmy Vesey here. Vesey began the year like a man possessed, scoring six goals in his first 10 games. But he has hit the skids lately. Just three goals his last 21 games and none his last seven, during which his minutes have fluctuated, including a low 10:35 Tuesday. Vesey needs to get back to doing what he did earlier in the season, using his size to go down low and carve out room and sufficient speed to create row. Maybe his fight against Mark Stone will re-spark his game.
Now onto Miller. Like the past few years, coach Alain Vigneault is showing tough love to Miller. After spending most of the season in the top-six AV dropped him down to the fourth line alongside Marek Hrivik and Pirri. When asked why, the aoch had the following response, as noted by Larry Brooks in the NY Post:
“You can’t force things that are not there. As much as we like the offensive looks that he’s getting, the ratio of chances for and against needs to be better. There are too many things being forced, and not just in our zone.
“It got to the point where we had to cut his ice time a little bit.…
Like Vesey and several others, Miller got off to a strong start. In his case, that was just a continuation of the rise in his game from last year. Miller might well have been the Blueshirts’ best forward through the season’s first quarter, combining a physical edge with production (18 points in 20 games) and outstanding work on the penalty kill with Kevin Hayes as his partner. While that penalty kill combination has been good, almost scoring twice Tuesday, Miller game and production have tailed off (zero points in the last seven games, four points over the last 17) resulting from or due to his drop in ice time,
Normally, I would be going crazy. But AV's strategy worked last season, so I am willing to give him a bit of slack here. Miller has one of the best combinations of grit and skill on the team. I would expect him to rediscover his game before too long. The return of the injured players will help, as AV can possibly place him back with those he skated with earlier in the season and allow his talent to show through. In addition, the dichotomy between how Miller and the young players like Skjei are treated as compared to Girardi and Klein is annoying, but I am unfortunately somewhat resigned to it. Plus, maybe AV realizes that the kids can be molded while the vets likely are what they are, but messages still need to be sent and should be.