Rangers' tighter defense key to revival in new year
Rangers players celebrate their 1-0 shootout win against the Columbus Blue Jackets in an NHL hockey game at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
A sense of dread filled the Garden. Moments later, the fear and the worry were replaced by something resembling incandescent joy and relief.
With just under a minute left in the second period of the Rangers’ 1-0 shootout win over the Blue Jackets on Saturday night, Columbus left winger Mikael Pyythia jumped on a loose puck in the neutral zone and began skating all alone toward Igor Shesterkin.
It was a breakaway — or it would have been if not for Reilly Smith’s backcheck. As Pyythia bore down for a shot attempt, Smith, who had raced back from the offensive zone into the defensive zone, deftly used his stick blade to ever so slightly poke the puck away from Shesterkin and toward the end boards.
No goal. No shot. No shot attempt.
For a team that theoretically was constructed with high-caliber offense, one of the themes in the Rangers’ 6-1-2 start to the month has been their defensive play.
Entering Sunday night’s game at Bell Centre against the Montreal Canadiens, the Rangers (22-20-3, 47 points) were yielding 2.67 goals and 29.2 shots per game in their nine contests in January. In their first 36 games of the season, they allowed 3.14 goals per game and 31.6 shots against.
“We were giving up goals early in games” was Adam Fox’s analysis of the difference in the Rangers’ defensive play since the NHL’s holiday break. “Since we’ve been back in that lock, it’s helped us with familiarity positionally and just stopping some of that onslaught of chances that were happening earlier in the year.”
Take, for example, what transpired on home ice Saturday night. The Rangers were outshot 15-4 in the first period, but in the final 45 minutes spanning the second and third periods and the five-minute overtime, they limited the Blue Jackets to 12 shots. In that same period, the Rangers fired 22 shots at Daniil Tarasov.
“Similar to the last game [against Utah], I thought really good in the second and third periods,” coach Peter Laviolette said in response to a question about his team’s defensive play. “The first period for me was a little bit too much. I thought we had some chances but I thought they outdid us a little bit. But then we just addressed some things between periods, a couple adjustments, and I thought we were much tighter in the second and third period.”
The Rangers continue to gain ground in the Eastern Conference wild-card race. They entered Sunday night’s game five points behind Ottawa for the first wild-card spot and four points behind Columbus for the second.
Three other teams also were ahead of the Rangers in the wild-card standings, including the youthful Canadiens (22-19-4, 48 points), who were coming off a 7-3 loss to the Maple Leafs on home ice Saturday night. In that game, Montreal surrendered seven goals in the final two periods, including five in the third.
That might have been a place in which the Rangers would have found themselves not all that long ago.
“We’re just playing better hockey all around,” said Vincent Trocheck, whose shootout goal won it for the Rangers. “Whenever you play a smarter, better brand of hockey, then you just feel more confident about your game. Going into games, or going into second or third periods down, or not playing as well as you’d like, you have the confidence to turn that around.”
It certainly helps to have Shesterkin as a last line of defense. He recorded his second shutout of the season and the 17th of his career.
“You play a game when you can get 0-0 to overtime, you know he’s done his job,” Laviolette said. “He’s played really well for us, and we need that. We’re in a position where we’ve got to win games, win points.”
Report: Trade for Miller off right now
During Saturday night’s “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast, Sportsnet NHL insider Elliotte Friedman reported that a potential trade between the Rangers and Vancouver Canucks “is off right now.” It is believed that the Canucks are willing to trade 31-year-old J.T. Miller, who is in the second year of a seven-year, $56 million contract, because of a personality conflict with teammate Elias Pettersson.
Miller, whom the Rangers selected with the 15th overall pick in the 2011 draft, has 31 points (eight goals and 23 assists) in 35 games.
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