If Jan. 1 is truly a day for optimism, then count the Rangers in.
It hasn’t been an easy road for the Blueshirts, now almost at the halfway mark of this season following their sweep of the two-game New Year’s Eve trip that went through the bowels of the standings against Arizona and Colorado. To look back on the first 39 games with a record of 26-12-1, good enough for third place in the behemoth of the Metropolitan Division, is to see these Rangers are in the process of weathering the storm of injuries rather well.
The big hope rests with the fact it won’t be too long before they will be put back together.
There are three more games before the Rangers get their first taste of the newly mandated five-day “bye week,” starting Sunday. There is a chance Rick Nash could return from his nagging groin injury sometime before then, with a game at home against the Sabres on Tuesday, followed by road games against the Flyers on Wednesday and the Blue Jackets on Saturday. If John Tortorella’s Columbus club can keep winning, the game Saturday would be to break the all-time win streak record of 17 — and boy, wouldn’t that be a scene?
Whether Nash plays or not, by the Jan. 13 end of the break the Rangers will have played six games in 20 days. Soon after the Rangers return, both Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich will be on constant watch for their availability coming back from a broken leg and from back and core problems, respectively.
The most recent time the Rangers dressed a lineup with Nash, Zibanejad and Buchnevich was Nov. 12, after which Buchnevich went back on injured reserve, having now missed 24 straight games and 29 of the past 37. Zibanejad then broke his leg in a game against the Panthers on Nov. 20, and has missed 20 straight. Nash first hurt his groin on the soft ice of Barclays Center on Dec. 6, and has missed nine of 11 games because of it.
During the team’s terrific 13-4-0 start, it was buoyed by the idea of its offensive depth, and how it was getting production from all four lines. But that depth has been tested, and missing three of the team’s top-six forwards is not an easy thing to overcome.
But the defense has tightened up, the goaltending has gotten better, and different players have carried the offensive load. The line of Chris Kreider-Derek Stepan-Mats Zuccarello has been dominant of late, defenseman Nick Holden has scored three goals in the past three games while ably holding down the front on the second power-play unit, and the man-advantage as a whole has gone 7-for-13 over the beatdowns of the Coyotes and Avalanche.
A big boost has also come from J.T. Miller, who scored twice in Colorado to aid Kreider’s hat trick and allow his team to score six goals for the second straight game. Miller responded after he had recently been demoted to fourth-line duty as coach Alain Vigneault explained that he needed to make better puck decisions. Miller knew this was true because the Rangers’ in-house stats made it clear he was having more bad shifts than good.
“I like to make plays. I’m confident I can make the high-percentage play, but as me and AV have talked about over the past few years, sometimes that’s not it,” Miller said. “I mean, it’s on paper; making more bad plays than good ones. It is what it is. I just have to put my head down and play well after that.”
Yet Miller now has 12 goals on the season, while Kreider’s line has combined for 27 points in this three-game winning streak that has come out of the Christmas break. Heck, Matt Puempel, claimed off waivers from the Senators on Nov. 21, recorded his first hat trick Thursday against the Coyotes and has five goals in his first 13 games as a Ranger.
“You never try to get too high or too low in this game,” Miller said.
But it would be easy to be high on the Rangers’ prospects for 2017.