The New York Rangers open a four-game road trip, three in Western Canada and one in Seattle, tonight against the Calgary Flames. Brennan Othmann makes his season debut with Matt Rempe still in New York being evaluated for his upper body injury suffered in his fight against Ryan Reaves on Thursday against San Jose. The Blueshirts look to break a two-game losing streak tonight in Calgary.
Othmann Debut/Lines Today:
Panarin – Miller – Raddysh
Sheary – Zibanejad – Lafrenière
Cuylle – Laba – Othmann
Edström – Carrick – Pärssinen
Gavrikov – Fox
Robertson – Borgen
Soucy – Schneider
A new “kid” line is in place. Will Cuylle, brilliant last year on the third line, has struggled in his move into the top-six. Whether it is the step up in class versus top-pair defenseman or just a slump, Cuylle has just one goal in nine contests. In addition, Cuylle has not looked like the physical force he was last year.
The hope is back on the third line and paired with Noah Laba and Othmann, Cuylle will re-find his game. His new trio all like to play physical hockey and hopefully will benefit from their new teammates. Look for Cuylle to be ultra-aggressive today.
New York also re-jiggered the other three lines. Tay;lor Raddysh, off his hat trick Thursday, moves up to the top line. He is skating with J.T. Miller and Artemi Panarin, who are playing together trying to jumpstart their games.
Alexis Lafreniere, so disappointing to date, is now on the right side with Mika Zibanejad with Conor Sheary moved to the left. Sheary has not done much offensively – who has – but has brought a lunch pail game nightly, showing max effort on each shift. Maybe switching sides will ignite Laf.
With Rempe sidelined, Jusso Parsinnen slides down to skate with Adam Edström and Sam Carrick. Jonny Brodzinski is the healthy scratch again, Rempe might be able to join the team later in the road trip, though that depends on the result of the exam in New York. If no concussion or no major damage to his hand, maybe he plays Tuesday in Vancouver or Thursday in Edmonton.
Vincent Trocheck Not Close to Returning:
We have no idea what Trocheck’s injury is, nor is he close to returning. Sunday was the eighth game Trocheck missed. He will need to miss at least two more games and be sidelined 24 days, which is November 3. As he is not even close, Trocheck might not be ready even by that possible return date.
It’s pretty frustrating to keep talking to myself in old blogs
Sorry, I will try and post in the last blog when a new one is up
It’s a weird quirk of the site. Some team fans comment (as you did) on the blog response. Particularly Rangers, Red Wings and Blackhawks fans. Others — Montreal, Philly and Toronto in particular — comment in the fan forums. I’d prefer having more people commenting in the fan forum section for the simple reason that it doesn’t move down the page (it’s self-contained) and more conducive to back-and-forth discussions.
Chris Drury is to blame for this embarrassment on ice.
I was still optimistic after the first six or so games. They looked great defensively then. Now it’s just embarrassing, losing to the sharks and the flames. They honestly look like a lottery team, which is hard to do when you have Shesty in net. Blow it up.
I was hoping Igor would go ballistic in the locker room post game as his teammates are leaving him out to dry. Brutal.
It’s a shame what Drury did to this team.
I don’t even enjoy watching the games this year, besides the losing just a boring brand of hockey.
Didnt even see this blog until now. Place is like a ghost town. Im not sure if this edition of the team is a continuation of last season or just the players aging. I really didnt have any faith in Sully. The Pens were dead in the water the last few seasons with Sid, Malkin and Letang so if Sully couldnt get that team to perform, I didnt have much hope for this one. Its only ten games, Id like at least another 5-10 to get a firm grasp of what this team really is. We will see.
I will make sure to note in prior blog when a new one is up and also try and tweet when a new one is posted. Open to ideas as to how to increase interest and build the community.
Hey Jan thanks, it will take a bit to get use to the new site. Its confusing with the forums and your blogs in regards to responding. Once the kinks are worked out Im sure people will be back in droves.
Thanks Brukie. I hope so.
As far as the Chicago blogs by Coach Frenchy are concerned, sometimes they appear only on the home page, but then at other times, are also listed among the forum topics. Why is that?
I think a lot more of the Blackhawks fans frequent and comment via the forum when the new blogs are listed there. That could be due to the fact there is a much visited “General Discussion” forum there that a lot of fans are used to going to. Personally, I would like to see the blog topics always added to the forum topics.
Aso, when commenting through the forum, there is no “time delay” for awaiting moderator approval. Commenting via the blog on the home page requires that approval which makes it difficult to carry on a real time conversation with other posters
We have a weird quirk in our Word Press setup. Mike Augello can easily add blogs into the related forum. Even though I have the same all-access level of permission on the site, for whatever reason, I do NOT have the add to forum box on the content management system. As a result, any blog I want added to the forum has to be done individually and manually. Not a big deal when we have one or two articles pending to go live. But when we have six, eight, 10 blogs in queue, it gets tough to keep copying each URL, creating a new forum thread title and pasting it into a header for however many different team forums we need it for.
That’s a kink that DEFINITELY still needs to get fixed.
Thanks for the context and information. I believe the columns need to be added to the forums for the comments to be placed there, which enables more of a conversation.
Thanks for the replies Bill and Jan. Just a thought, maybe each writer can get the permissions (and required instructions) to enter his/her blog to the required forums. But whatever, it’s your site. I hope something can get worked out among everyone to get things working smoother.
Thanks Bill for keeping us updated
No thanks to Chris Drury and about 90% of the team. The org is in such a bad spot outside of the fact that we have a bunch of picks this year. Large, unmovable contracts for aging and underperforming players, young players either not developing or not being played, and not a great prospect pipeline to boot. And no one seems to care
New blog up