


Regarding the Rangers, whose ability to self-correct is yet another attribute they have developed under Peter Laviolette and the head coach’s accomplished staff:
- Don’t look now, but perhaps Ryan Lindgren needs to be looking over his shoulder a bit more often in the wake of three successive games last week in which No. 55 was crushed as if he were Petr Prucha and unaware of where he was on the ice.
Tuesday, Lindgren was nailed by Toronto’s Jake McCabe before Mika Zibanejad— in as substantial a role reversal as you could imagine — stepped in for his teammate and challenged the Leafs winger. Friday, he took a big blow from Max Jones.
And then Saturday, the 25-year-old was crushed from behind into the rear boards by David Pastrnak in a continuation of a feud that apparently originated last season on Nov. 3, 2022 in a match at the Garden.
That was the night on which Lindgren caught Pastrnak unaware and drove the brilliant winger into the wall. Later, Pastrnak delivered a blow from the blind side in open ice that knocked the defenseman out of the game with a shoulder issue that sidelined him for the next two matches.
Pastrnak received a major and game misconduct for his blow Saturday that bloodied Lindgren and sent him off toward the end of the second period with a towel pressed across his face to stop the bleeding. The defenseman did not miss a shift in the third period.
Toughness is not in question. But that is also not the point. Lindgren may be the toughest guy on the block, but taking repeated substantial blows the way he did last week surely takes a toll and exposes this suddenly vulnerable athlete to serious injury.
The comparison with Prucha — smashed out of the league within six years after recording 30 goals as a rookie in 2005-06 and 22 as a sophomore — is somewhat fanciful but a more apt one is likely Ryan McDonagh, who took repeated blows up against the boards, suffered a string of injuries, including a pair of shoulder separations, and leveled off his final three seasons on Broadway.
Lindgren needs to have, as Bill Bradley might phrase it, a slightly better sense of where he is on the ice and who is coming for him. As he gets another shot at McCabe in Toronto on Tuesday, he needs to be more aware of lurking danger.
- If you have watched Mika Zibanejad long enough — and we all have, through highs and lows beginning in 2016-17 — you know that it will always only be a matter of time before he figures it out.
So valuable, especially on the defensive side of the puck, even when he might be running lukewarm, Zibanejad has kicked it up a notch. He is demanding the puck and assertive with it. He is using his body.
Witness Zibanejad stepping in for Lindgren, quite a moment indeed.
There is a swagger to No. 93 when he is scoring. That is the swagger we are seeing from Zibanejad, who is interacting more often and demonstrably with officials during games and television timeouts.
- I think Igor Shesterkin needed Saturday more than the Rangers necessarily did.
And the recently vulnerable netminder delivered a superior, 21-save performance in this tense contest in which he kept his team within 1-0 until the Blueshirts could tie it at 10:49 of the third — on a power play that was humming despite going only 1-for-6 — before winning it in overtime.
Shesterkin was poised, sure and, yes, quick. He tracked the puck well and kept rebounds to a minimum and under control. He battled and got physical with B’s who consistently and aggressively went to the blue paint.
This was Shesterkin’s kind of game.
He needed it.
- Seriously, addressing this was not my original intention. Kind of stumbled into it after making the analogy between McDonagh and Lindgren.
That, in addition to seeing that Libor Hajek’s AHL contract with Wilkes-Barre was terminated so the 25-year-old defenseman could pursue opportunities in his native Czechia, I thought to myself, wait a second, are you telling me the Rangers got nothing for Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller and still somehow the team went to the conference final four seasons after the decision?
- Connor Mackey, on the Hartford shuttle, has spent 17 days on the Rangers’ roster as a frequent recall meant to ensure the varsity wouldn’t be caught short if a player developed a health issue hours before a game.
The defenseman has been on the game sheet 11 times, the latest on Saturday. It also represented his 11th healthy scratch before he was returned yet again to the Wolf Pack immediately following the 2-1 victory.
But this has been a worthwhile endeavor for the 27-year-old, who signed a one-year, two-way contract with the Blueshirts on July 1 as a free agent late of the Coyotes. Mackey is in for $775,000 on the NHL level and $400,000 in the AHL.
The difference in Mackey’s NHL and AHL pay amounts to approximately $1,953.13 per day, based on a 192-day schedule. Spending those 17 days on the Rangers’ roster has added approximately $33,203.21 (pre-tax) to his paychecks And it is only December.