The Rangers play their second game of their five-game road trip Saturday in Nashville. The team comes off a 3-2 win that was stolen for them by Henrik Lundqvist, who gets the night off today. Game 23 of a season doesn't normally have a lot of intrigue, especially one in Nashville as opposed to an intra-division or conference game, but tonight may be a bit different. There are three interesting sub-plots to keep an eye on.
First, the Rangers are doing their annual travel with a father trip, so 18 Rangers have their fathers on this trip. The players should be juiced to be able to play in front of their dad, and no one likes to play poorly in front of their parent, so hopefully this gives them a bit more incentive than they may have already have.
Second, as most of the beat writers pointed out, including Andrew Gross, in addition to being the only general manager in the Nashville Predators’ history, David Poile is also serving as Team USA’s GM for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Several Rangers look to be locks or near locks for the team, while one is trying to impress the brass enough to be an outside consideration. Ryan Callahan is a basic lock for Sochi and should be one of the assistant captains, if not the captain of the team if Dustin Brown isn't. Ryan McDonagh is pretty much all but in, which surprises none of us. Derek Stepan seems to have a good chance, since Poile pointed out the team lacks depth at center and Stepan has been better after a slow start to the year. Seeing Stepan as the third line center for the Red, White and Blue is a pretty good bet.
Now for the outsider, trying to get in, Chris Kreider. Poile said today: "He started the year in the minors. Personally I’ve been very impressed with his play of his late. I think all that he’s trying to do, is get that consistency to his game. He’s got that big body, and a great skater. He just hasn’t put it all together for them. A little bit of a late addition to our evaluations but he’s doing really well right now. We’re not going to make any decisions until we have to and that’s Jan. 1. So we’re going to be watching right up to there. It’s another opportunity tonight.… Kreider, who has International experience playing in the WJC, has a very outside shot, but a big game tonight, building off his goal Thursday and fine play recently could open some eyes and give the Rangers four USA Olympians.
Third, Cam Talbot. The starting goaltender tonight played his college hockey 90 minutes away from Nashville at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He has spoken about how frequently he and his teammates came up to Nashville, so it would be very likely for him to have a decent rooting section there tonight. In addition, coach Alain Vigneault said that Talbot will start three times in the current nine games in 15-day stretch. The team has back-to-back contests next weekend against the Bruins and Canucks, but you Hank will likely want to start both, so it will interesting to see who Talbot starts against.
It's the same lineup for the Rangers as the one they used in the win over Dallas. The Predators are 5-4-1 in their last 10, but have won three in a row, thanks to solid goaltending by Marek Mazanec filling in for Pekka Rinne. Glen Miller had a great post on his view on if the Blueshirts were able to pull the trigger on an MDZ-Glencross deal. I will give my view on it hopefully tomorrow. But in short, I like Glencross a lot, though we would have to wait for him to be back at 100% from his second degree sprained MCL, likely by late-December, before any deal happened. You know my thoughts on MDZ, but it is a deal that could make some sense for the Rangers.
Let's Go Rangers!!!