Rangers coach Peter Laviolette looks for more offense from the defense
Defenseman Braden Schneider had one of the three goals that the Rangers' defense scored Wednesday night. Credit: AP/Adam Hunger
SUNRISE, Fla. — After his team got three of its five goals from defensemen in Wednesday’s home win over Washington, Rangers coach Peter Laviolette was asked if part of his vision is to see more goals coming from his blueliners.
He didn’t say no.
“Well, I love that,’’ Laviolette said that night. “I love that they were jumping into the holes, which was great. They were moving the pucks, they were up in the rush. That’s all part of the game nowadays. It was nice to see them get rewarded.
“They’re certainly encouraged and welcome to jump into the offense.’’
At Friday’s morning skate at Amerant Bank Arena, where the Rangers kicked off a two-game trip to the Sunshine State with their first meeting of the season with the Florida Panthers, defenseman Braden Schneider said he isn’t necessarily trying to score more goals. However, he has received the message from the coaching staff, loud and clear, that it’s OK to go on the attack, and he’s definitely trying to do that.
“Our message has been to play as a five-man unit, whether it’s in the ‘D’ zone, the neutral zone, the ‘O’ zone,’’ said Schneider, who had one of the goals against Washington. “They want us to all be tight and to all be involved. So I definitely think [Laviolette] likes having the ‘D’ up and involved in the offense and moving around and looking to create stuff.’’
Schneider’s goal was his third of the season and his second in four games. The 22-year-old, the second of two first-round picks by the Rangers in the 2020 NHL Draft, is in his third season and has 10 career goals.
And while he generally plays on the third defense pair and has mostly been thought of as a stay-at-home defenseman, Laviolette recently said he sees Schneider as more of a two-way defenseman, given his offensive skills.
On the other hand, Ryan Lindgren proudly identifies as a stay-at-home defenseman, one who has two goals this season and nine in five NHL seasons. But he had an assist against Washington and a goal in the win over Buffalo in the last game before the NHL’s Christmas break. And while he promised to always make defense his top priority, he said that under Laviolette, he is trying to play a little more offensively.
“It’s maybe something you think about a little more, trying to get up in the rush and help things out offensively,’’ Lindgren said. “But . . . my job is defense, and I know that. That’s nothing I want to take away from, especially playing with Foxy [Adam Fox]. You know he likes to jump up there, and you know, I hang back a little bit more. [But] it’s always important to get people up there and something we try to do.’’
Fox, who won the 2021 Norris Trophy as the league’s best defenseman and was a finalist for the award last season, has only three goals this season and is behind last season’s pace, when he scored a career-high 12. He did miss 10 games in November with a knee injury and he does lead the Rangers’ defensemen in points with 23. But entering Friday, he’d gone 15 straight games without scoring a goal dating to Oct. 28.
The rest of the defense corps has picked up the slack. Of the Rangers’ 113 goals entering Friday, 20 of them had been scored by defensemen. K’Andre Miller, who had two goals against Washington, led the way with seven. Fox, Schneider and Erik Gustafsson had three each and Lindgren and Jacob Trouba had two each.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
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