Articles in New York Rangers

from Mollie Walker of the New York Post,

Patrick Roy climbed to the top of the mountain with the QMJHL’s Quebec Remparts, who hoisted the CHL’s 2023 Memorial Cup on Sunday, but it will not lead to a NHL head coaching gig with the New York Rangers.

The Post has learned that the Rangers do not consider Roy a coaching candidate and he will not receive an interview for the position.

The Rangers have not reached out to Roy, and there is no plan to do so.

John Hynes and Peter Laviolette remain the front-runners for the open job behind the Blueshirts bench.

The Rangers are still doing their due diligence on both candidates before a final decision is made.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Perhaps Drury is waiting for the conclusion of that tournament to schedule an interview with Roy, his teammate in Colorado for four years that included the 2001 Stanley Cup championship.

That would be the only logical explanation for why the Blueshirts have not yet reached out to Roy after dog-paddling for weeks in this shallow pool of candidates.

Unless, that is, Drury believes that Roy has too large of a personality and is unsure of his ability to work with the Hall of Fame goaltender in light of Roy’s clashes over personnel decisions and lines of responsibility with general manager Joe Sakic, also a one-time teammate and friend, during his three years behind the Colorado bench from 2013-16.

The Rangers are in need of a coach who will instill structure to the group while being able to maximize the team’s offensive creativity. Roy has brought structure to the Remparts.

The Rangers are in need of a coach who will make it his business to get the most out of their kids, and that starts with Alexis Lafreniere. Roy has been coaching teenagers for last the last five years and 13 years overall in two separate stints with Quebec in which he has also been GM.

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NEW YORK, May 6, 2023 – New York Rangers President and General Manager Chris Drury announced today that the Rangers organization and head coach Gerard Gallant have mutually agreed to part ways.

“I want to first thank Gerard for his work and commitment to the Rangers during his time as head coach,” said Drury. “I have a ton of respect for Gerard as both a coach and person and truly appreciate everything he did for us on and off the ice these last two seasons. After my evaluation of the season and discussions with Gerard, we mutually came to the conclusion that a change would be beneficial for both parties. I wish he and his family all the best in the future. Our search for a new head coach will begin right away.”

“I would like to thank Mr. Dolan, Chris and the Rangers organization for giving me the opportunity to be their head coach these last two seasons,” said Gallant. “The experience of coaching an Original Six franchise with such rich history and an incredibly passionate fanbase is something I will never forget. After conversations with my family and Chris, it became clear that this was the right decision for both myself and the Rangers at this time.”

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Gerard Gallant’s ire in answering questions about his job security at Wednesday’s breakup day was understandable but misplaced.

For the rampant speculation that the Rangers might make a coaching change in the wake of their first-round, seven-game defeat to the Devils would stop in an instant upon a signal — not even a statement — from the organization that Gallant will indeed and of course be behind the bench next season.

Instead, crickets.

The only deduction to be made is that a decision is pending, whether that is or is not fair to Gallant after steering the club to 110- and 107-point seasons that features last year’s run to the conference finals.

The pool of potential replacements appears shallow. A year ago, Barry Trotz, Paul Maurice, Bruce Cassidy, Pete DeBoer, Rick Tocchet and John Tortorella would have been available. Now, not one of them is. Who’s out there, Peter Laviolette, whose teams in Nashville and Washington have failed to win a playoff round since 2018?

That might be giving pause to president-general manager Chris Drury and to Garden chairman Jim Dolan as the hierarchy processes this early elimination.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

There was no hip-hip-hooray for the Rangers or for Patrick Kane, who reported to New York with the specific lower-body issues that have plagued him for the last two years and were just too much to overcome.

Eyes wide open, the Rangers traded for him, anyway. Eyes wide open, No. 88 accepted and embraced the opportunity, anyway.

But in the end, No. 88 was the cherry on top that fell off the sundae before it could be savored.

“We’re going to have to find a way to get me back to as close to 100 percent as possible because I look back at that series and I know if I felt a little better I can help us win it,” Kane said on Wednesday’s breakup day at the training facility. “So it’s almost disappointing and depressing in a way but that’s kind of how I feel about it.”

Kane recorded six points (1-5) in the seven-game defeat to the Devils, third on the club. He scored his goal in the third period of Game 2 through which he appeared as explosive as ever. He was perhaps the best Ranger other than Igor Shesterkin over the final 40 minutes of Game 7, desperately trying to make it happen.

But it did not. And it did not for most of the series in which Kane did not at all resemble the dynamic game-changing forward who rates at the tippy top of the list of the greatest American-born players in NHL history.

“I commend the training staff and [head athletic trainer] Jim Ramsay for getting me where I felt as good as I possibly could so when the game started I could just think about hockey and playing,” Kane said. “But before, it’s just a lot of maintenance and thinking about how you’re going to get yourself to feel the best as possible to play.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

There will be no knee-jerk reaction here to the future of head coach Gerard Gallant, who has steered the team to 110- and 107-point seasons in his two years behind the bench, with one trip to the conference finals as notches in his belt. There should be no rush to judgment here and there won’t be from Drury, who operates methodically and without knee-jerk emotion.

Gallant has his faults: He is probably too stubborn, he is probably too loyal to veterans and he may not make in-game adjustments as quickly as needed. He also presided over a team that came up with three no-shows in the final five games of a playoff series. If the team had a disastrous fortnight, the coach is part of the team.

But sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. The Rangers marquee stars raved about their coach last season after he succeeded David Quinn. Constant flux is not what this organization needs. It would be folly to dismiss Gallant in order to hire a recyclable, just because.

The roster needs reconstruction and that won’t be easy to do given the no-move clauses owned by Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Jacob Trouba and Vincent Trocheck and the tight cap squeeze Drury will confront this offseason.

The Rangers, as I have been saying for years, need a line with a lockdown mentality and matchup capability. But I am not sure how Drury would go about that while locked in with Zibanejad, Trocheck and Filip Chytil down the middle. Not one is a checking center. Maybe, and this is probably indicative of the type of knee-jerk reaction Drury and the staff should avoid, but maybe this is the time to revisit the notion of moving Chytil to the wing on either of the top two units. See why I am a columnist?

I cannot even begin to explain Artemi Panarin’s series.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

The Rangers’ Manifest Destiny never came close to fruition. The team that not only waited all season for the playoffs but told you so from the start of training camp, won three postseason games, seven fewer than last season when the Cinderella Blueshirts went to the conference finals.

This time around, the team loaded with marquee stars could not get out of the first round.

If this 107-point season was not a colossal waste, it surely ended in colossal disappointment.

The team across the River stole the Blueshirts’ destiny.

The Devils, who had missed the playoffs nine times in the previous 10 years and missed the cutline by 37 points last year, were in total control of this Game 7, winning by a 4-0 score that actually flattered the Blueshirts.

Total Control by the team that played Total Hockey and now prepare to face Carolina in the conference semifinals while the Rangers prepare for breakup day.

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Ready?

NEW YORK (April 30, 2023) -- For the first time since their epic double-overtime thriller in the 1994 Conference Finals, the Hudson River rivals New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers will meet in a Game 7 to decide their Eastern Conference First Round series on Monday, May 1, at Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. The winner will advance to the Second Round and a matchup with their Metropolitan Division rival Carolina Hurricanes.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

There was a reason that the Rangers prioritized Vladimir Tarasenko when seeking to fill a top-six hole on the right side and were willing to sacrifice a first-rounder in order to acquire the wing from St. Louis by jumping the market three weeks before the trade deadline.

The problem is, you wouldn’t know it by reviewing the way the club has utilized the 31-year-old through the first five games of the Battle of the Hudson. It is as if, upon the acquisition of Patrick Kane 18 days later, Tarasenko became kind of an afterthought.

Get this: Tarasenko, a prime force in the Blues’ 2019 Stanley Cup championship, is seventh among Rangers forwards in both overall ice time and power-play ice time. The 11:46 he got in Game 1 represented the second-lowest ice time he has had in 95 career playoff games, getting less only in his NHL postseason debut as a rookie in 2013.

Games 1, 2 and 5 were three of the eight playoff games in which Tarasenko has gotten the least amount of ice time over his career. It is impossible to believe that was the plan when general manager Chris Drury acquired him.

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

After 60 minutes of relentless hockey from a team possessed, after three straight victories, one more impressive and decisive than the next, this is what we know five games into this Battle of the Hudson:

There is no quit in New Jersey.

The Rangers, on the other hand, we’ll find out if they can live up to their very own mantra when they take the Garden ice on Saturday facing Game 6 elimination following Thursday’s 4-0 paddy whacking at the Rock.

“Win one game,” Chris Kreider said. “The playoffs are comprised of highs and lows and we’re at a low point right now. If we can’t climb our way out of this, we don’t deserve to go on a deep run.

“Win one game.”

The roof is falling in on the marquee Rangers. They have scored two goals in the last three games — one goal in the last 127:57 — against freshman netminder Akira Schmid, who is turning himself into an instant folk hero. After scoring four power-play goals on their first seven opportunities, the Rangers have been blanked since the second period of Game 2.

That is not the worst of it, for while going 0-for-13 in the interim, the Blueshirts have yielded a pair of PPG’s to the Devils plus a shorthanded score in this one that seemed to break the Rangers.

Listen to this: Trailing 3-0 after the second period, the Rangers were outshot 20-2 in the third period.

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from Mollie Walker of the New York Post,

From strutting out of Prudential Center to slinking out of it, the Rangers have been turned upside down by the Devils.

The same Rangers team that came into the same building just last week and looked like they weren’t going to break a sweat in the first round ventured back for a pivotal, series-swinging Game 5 and were blown out, 4-0, by the Devils on Thursday night.

The Broadway Blueshirts who danced around and had their way with the Devils in Games 1 and 2 in Newark were shut out by a rookie goaltender and are now facing elimination Saturday night at the Garden.

“Got to win one game,” Chris Kreider said. “Got to go home. We’ve had a terrific fan base all year, we let them, we let ourselves down at home. So it’s up to us to show up and play the way we want to play from puck drop. … It’s time to step up and do those things.”

Oh, how the mighty Rangers are falling, while the timid Devils have awakened.

The Rangers have drifted far away from what they do best as this series has progressed.

The Devils, on the other hand, have gotten the hang of this playoffs thing.

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Highlights are below.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Mika Zibanejad has been here before, a year ago actually, during the first-round series against the Penguins in which he went scoreless as the Rangers trailed in the series 3-2.

Three goals later from Zibanejad, two in Game 6 and one in Game 7, and the Rangers were on their way to the run that served as a platform for this 107-point season.

“You and I have talked at different times this year about what I learned going through that, and what I know is that I can’t let the fact that I haven’t scored get into my head,” Zibanejad told The Post after Monday’s 3-1 Game 4 defeat to the Devils that squared the series at two-all. “I can’t let that change the rest of my game that is also important.

“If it were up to me, I would have seven goals by now. Obviously I’m frustrated. I’m not happy. I know this is part of my job and I know that questions arise about it when we are losing. But I can’t dwell on that and I can’t dwell on me. It’s all about us.”

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Below are the game highlights.

from Mollie Walker of the New York Post,

he Devils have made this first-round series against the Rangers competitive again.

Dougie Hamilton scored 11:36 into overtime to keep the Devils’ spirits alive and hand the Rangers a 2-1 loss Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, which prevented the home team from strengthening their already strong grip on this series.

“When we’ve been challenged and we’ve been down we have always answered the call this year — always,” Devils head coach Lindy Ruff said after his team’s win, which cut the Rangers’ series lead to 2-1.

The contest simply played more to the Devils’ style than the Rangers. With the score tied at one-all in the third period, the game turned into a track meet and the Devils were able to counter any offense the Rangers generated. That carried into overtime, as well.

And that was just what the Devils needed to alter the trajectory of the series.

cotinued

Below watch the game highlights.

from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

If Cher could turn back time, if she could find the way, she would rewind the clock to one year ago so the Rangers could begin the playoffs with Igor Shesterkin at the top of his considerable game.

Lo and behold, it appears that the world-class entertainer has done just that. The process started five-plus weeks ago, but when the Blueshirts took out the Devils by an emphatic 5-1 score Tuesday night in Game 1 of the first-round playoff series, Shesterkin indeed was a facsimile of the netminder who won the 2021-22 Vezina Trophy and drove his team to the 2022 conference finals.

“It’s what we have come to expect,” Chris Kreider said after notching a pair of power play deflections to surpass Rod Gilbert as the Rangers’ all-time leading playoff goal-scorer with 36. “He’s our best player and not only does he make big saves, he makes them look easy.”

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Game highlights are below.

from Greg Wyshynski of ESPN,

Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Rangers, is 11 miles away from Newark, New Jersey's Prudential Center, home of the New Jersey Devils. They are separated by a river. They are bonded by an intense, decades-long enmity.

The Battle of the Hudson is one of the NHL's most storied rivalries. For the first time since 2012, the Rangers and Devils will face each other in a playoff series, beginning tonight in Newark. It marks the seventh time these franchises will have met in the Stanley Cup playoffs, with New York holding a 4-2 lead in series victories.

The animosity between these unfriendly neighbors extends from the fans to the players to even their front offices -- consider that the Rangers and Devils made their first trade together in 2018.

"The hatred? I couldn't even put a number on it. The hatred was off the charts," said Ken Daneyko, who played 20 seasons with the Devils before becoming a broadcaster for the team. "It was an unwritten rule that you wouldn't even say their name. I imagine it was the same thing for them. It was that kind of rivalry."

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

Regarding the Rangers, who continue their Ye Olde Patrick Division Week with the Caps at the Garden on Tuesday before the Penguins hit Broadway for a Thursday-Saturday double feature.

1. Here the Blueshirts are, fighting to nail down third place in the division and trying to crest just ahead of the playoffs while looking for all the world like a team coming out of training camp searching for an identity.

2. When I see Patrick Kane, whose game is as unrecognizable as the uniform he is wearing, I flash back to late March 2014 and a haggard, exasperated Marty St. Louis giving himself an extended face wash at a practice rink in Calgary while talking about having gone scoreless for his first 13 games as a Ranger.

Changing colors after a lifetime is not as easy as changing into a new top. But Kane, conspicuously low-key through his first 10 days in Blue, should stop being so diffident. Easier for me to say than for No. 88 to do, most likely, but management did not move heaven and earth to bring him here so that Kane could be just another guy in the chorus line.

Of course, reuniting Kane with Artemi Panarin was the way to go at the start. Their connection formed the initial impetus for the Rangers to even conjure this move. But maybe there was a good reason Streisand and Redford never tried to recreate the chemistry they had in “The Way We Were.”

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from Larry Brooks of the New York Post,

his was a case of divine intervention and a trade by immaculate conception. This was the way it was meant to be. Artemi Panarin and Patrick Kane back together again. Patrick Kane on Broadway.

These are the Rangers and they make no apologies for it. They are the Broadway Blueshirts and they are going for it in their own inimitable fashion.

There has never been a trade deadline quite like this one in which one Eastern power after another has loaded up, mostly at the expense of weak Western clubs. The Maple Leafs have added toughness cubed. The Lightning added another dollop of bottom-six sandpaper at an exorbitant price in an effort to win it again. The Devils acquired perhaps the best player on the market. The Bruins bolstered an otherwise powerhouse lineup. In other news, even the Islanders took a swing for the fences.

And the Rangers … the Rangers simply got the biggest name with the biggest résumé even if we all know that the winger is not 21 or 25 or 29 anymore. They got a triple Stanley Cup winner who has spent a career thriving under the spotlight and scoring important postseason goals.

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from Emily Kaplan of ESPN,

The Chicago Blackhawks have agreed to send star winger Patrick Kane to the New York Rangers, sources told ESPN on Tuesday.

In return, the Rangers are sending two draft picks to Chicago -- a 2023 second round pick, which carries conditions to improve to a first-round pick, as well as a 2023 fourth round pick.

The deal is expected to become official after 5 p.m. ET on Tuesday when New York has accrued the appropriate amount of cap space to fit in Kane's contract. Chicago will retain 50% of Kane's $10.5 million contract, and a third team signed on to take on 50% of that, meaning Kane will only count for $2.625 million against the Rangers cap.

The trade call is scheduled for later Tuesday, sources told ESPN.

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NEW YORK (Feb. 28, 2023) – New York Rangers defenseman K'Andre Miller has been suspended for three games, without pay, for unsportsmanlike conduct in an incident involving Los Angeles Kings defenseman Drew Doughty during NHL Game No. 950 in New York on Sunday, Feb. 26, the National Hockey League’s Department of Player Safety announced today.

The incident occurred at 16:37 of the first period. Miller was assessed a match penalty.

Under the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement and, based on his average annual salary, Miller will forfeit $15,000. The money goes to the Players’ Emergency Assistance Fund.

no video at this point from the NHL at this point but you can watch the incident here...

from Mollie Walker of the New York Post,

Rangers defenseman K’Andre Miller was tossed from Sunday night’s game against the Kings for spitting in Drew Doughty’s face.

The uncharacteristic act from Miller at 16:37 of the first period earned him a match penalty and put the Rangers in an even more precarious situation than they were already in at the start of the eventual 5-2 win over the Kings at the Garden.

During a scrum between the teams, Miller appeared to hock a loogie right in the Kings defenseman’s face. It is unclear if it was an accident or not, but either way, Miller was ejected and left the Rangers with just five defensemen.

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Watch the incident below.