The Rangers look to extend their winning streak to three games north of the border, as they face the Canadiens in Montreal. Gustav Rydahl was promoted as Jonny Brodzinski's wife went into labor while Filip Chytil has been dealing with an illness the past few days.
Following tonight's contest, New York takes on New Jersey at the Rock on Saturday. Alexis Lafreniere returns home for tonight's game. Hopefully the home cooking and presence of family and friends results in a big game for Laf. He has the perfect environment in which to do so, building off the solid enough game he had Tuesday against Carolina. With Chytil under the weather, the lines could be juggled, but Laf still should line up as the third line left wing.
A slightly surprising move is Jaro Halak will be between the pipes. This will be Halak's second start in three games, so maybe they are just giving Igor Shesterlkin a smidge more rest. Arthur Staple posted the below on Halak's numbers against the Habs.with him starting against the team that drafted him 20 years ago. Hopefully we get the goalie from the first line and not the second.
Halak w/BOS&STL vs MTL: 6-0-0, 0.82 GAA, .969, 2 shutouts
Halak w/NYI vs MTL: 0-4-0, 4.84 GAA, .829 save pct
The trade deadline is two months away. Anyone who has been reading the recent blogs knows this has been a topic of conversation in the comments. First and foremost is New York at a minimum maintaining their current place in the standings, making a move to improve the roster paramount. Second is continuing to accrue additional cap room by not carrying 23 players on the roster as much as possible, today's game notwithstanding. This would allow for more than one more to be made, even if the Rangers make a big addition - aka Patrick Kane - at the deadline.
Since we have nearly two months to the March 3 trade deadline, we have ample time to discuss, dissect and ergue - hopefully respectfully - as to which move or moves would make sense. After the Ryan Reaves trade, I wrote the following: "The Rangers could use the cap relief for a scoring forward(Patrick Kane, Bo Horvat, Gustav Nyquist?) at the deadline. but don't rule out the acquisition of a third-pair left handed d-man (Jakob Chychrun, Carson Soucy, Dimitri Kulikov?)." This is still the case.
Feel free to add Vladislav Gavrikov to the d-man list. But the rumored cost to acquire is what Montreal received from Florida last year for Ben Chiarot, a first round pick and second piece, which likely is more than the team will want to pay. If St. Louis' injuries force them to fall out of contention and deal, Vladimir Tarasenko - out for a month with a hand injury - could be a possible target.(In addition, per David Pagnotta, Ryan O'Reilly - also injured. - is of interest to New York). Timo Meier, if not signed long-term by San Jose, would also be a consideration even though he will a RFA, due to his high arb figure.