The past 25 days represented Adam Fox’s first real injury stint in his entire hockey career, and all went according to plan.
Not only did he recover smoothly, and on the projected timeline, but the Rangers managed to lose just two contests in regulation for a 7-2-1 record without their No. 1 defenseman over a 10-game stretch.
The Blueshirts proved to be a deep team.
Tyler Pitlick stepped into a shifted lineup without Filip Chytil, who was lost to injured reserve the same time as Fox, while Zac Jones filled in on defense and Erik Gustafsson assumed the 2023 Norris Trophy runner-up’s responsibilities.
Heck, Louis Domingue picked up his first win as a Ranger and his first in the NHL since Jan. 15, 2022 when goalies Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick were both unavailable earlier this month.
Fox was able to just focus on healing as the Blueshirts continued to stack wins despite the injuries.
“The team winning and seeing a lot of guys doing well is obviously nice,” Fox said before he returned to the Rangers lineup against the Red Wings at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. “It allows you to not feel like you have to rush to get back. It was a first for me to be out an extended period of time, but this was just trying to get back as soon as I could.”
The 25-year-old landed on long-term injured reserve after a leg collision with Hurricanes forward Sebastian Aho, which Fox described as a “bang-bang play.”
He said he felt a little pain when he tried to take a couple of shifts and realized something wasn’t right, so he left the game.
“I kind of knew it wasn’t going to be the worst thing right after,” he added. “But, you know, obviously just happy it wasn’t any longer.”
Head coach Peter Laviolette made it clear that Fox would return to all his usual posts, on the top of the first power-play unit and on the top defensive pair alongside Ryan Lindgren.
While Laviolette said he didn’t expect to play Fox 30 minutes against Detroit, the former Norris Trophy winner won’t have any restrictions.
The power play has missed Fox’s presence, even though Gustafsson brought his own savvy skills to the blue line as the replacement.
They went without a man-advantage goal in four of the 10 games without Fox, while capitalizing on just seven of their 26 power-play opportunities (26.92 percent).
Defensively, the Rangers held their own apart from a few periods.
Jones, who was a healthy scratch Wednesday for the first time since Nov. 2, and Braden Schneider had a mixed bag of performances as a defensive duo.
They were outscored 12-7 in 122:31 of ice time together, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Laviolette deliberately made as few changes to the lineup as possible since the Rangers were winning, which included entrusting Gustafsson to directly step in for Fox in order to keep the Jacob Trouba-K’Andre Miller pairing intact.
It paid off.
“His offense, his overall impact is really important for our team,” Laviolette said of Fox, whose 11 points in 10 games was second only to Gustafsson’s 15 in 20 among Rangers defenseman as play began Wednesday. “His leadership, his impact and also certainly his offensive impact. We’re talking about a guy that produces at a really high rate, so it helps us from a five-on-five standpoint, helps us from a power-play standpoint. A guy that plays 22-, 23-plus minutes a night in all situations.
“When you [get] somebody like that back into your lineup, I think it’s a real positive. I think everybody is excited, probably nobody more than him, to get back in there and get going again.”