Taking A Look At The New York Rangers Recent Line Changes

The underperforming New York Rangers are starting to get a few more wins under their belt. Their past two games have been victories against the St. Louis Blues and Vegas Golden Knights. Sure that win on home ice against St. Louis must have felt good, but the Rangers were the home team against a team struggling even more than they are.

Outplaying Vegas in all three zones to the tune of a 5-1 road win seems like an even bigger accomplishment. We won’t speak too soon, but it might be a big win to start feeling the tide turn on Broadway.

In his latest NHL Mailbag, Dan Rosen pointed to an interesting change the Rangers made in their lineup. Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko, both highly drafted young players playing below expectations, moved up to the first line with Mika Zibanejad. In the short two-game experiment, Lafreniere has two goals and one assist. Lafreniere scored one goal but has a +4 rating through both games.

Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko now find themselves on the New York Rangers’ top line. Players like Chris Kreider have been bumped down.

Of course, other lineup changes had to be made. Chris Kreider dropped to a third-line left-wing role. Rosen argued that Kreider would still get his power play ice time. Throughout the two-game “experiment,” Kreider has 15:29 and 17:34 of ice time, well below his season average of 19:35.

If Kreider’s going to have to find his ice time on the man advantage, those numbers make sense. New York only had two power plays against St. Louis, while they had eight against Vegas. His time on ice in those games reflects as such, but still.

Kreider also plays in all situations, on both New York’s power play and penalty kill on the first unit. Kakko and Lafreniere only see special teams time on New York’s second power-play unit. If anything, Kaako and Lafreniere’s promotion is one only for when their team is at even strength.

Two other lineup changes that stick out involve Jimmy Vesey and Barclay Goodrow. Vesey has been dropped down to the third-line left wing, which is appropriate considering he is suited for and was signed to play in a bottom-six role. He finds himself on the third line with Kreider who he also played on an opposing wing, while injuries and inconsistencies with the Rangers landed Vesey on New York’s top line.

Meanwhile, Barclay Goodrow takes that second-line right-wing spot. Goodrow has been used as a bottom-six forward throughout his career. He found great success with Tampa Bay in that role. In his two seasons with the Rangers, Goodrow has averaged 16:12 of ice time.

He was below that for the win against Vegas with 13:10 of ice time but above that with 18:07 of ice time against St. Louis. An interesting trend shows that Goodrow finished below his career Rangers average ice time (that 16:12 we were talking about) in 14 of the Rangers’ 18 games since the start of November. The Kakko and Lafreniere moves may reverse the trend of Goodrow seeing less action.

New York continues to try to find a place for Vitali Kravtsov. When his anticipated conditioning loan to the AHL didn’t happen, he played in the first game of the “experiment” against St. Louis without registering a point.

Kravtsov had seen time on the second line but was out of the lineup for the win against Vegas. That enabled Sammy Blais to come back in the lineup, but coach Gerard Gallant only justified his reasoning as a “coach’s decision”. Looks like even all the line shuffling won’t guarantee the prospect a place in the blue shirts lineup.

As long as the Rangers keep winning, expect this lineup to continue. It may be a small sample size, but so far so good. Until then, Kratsov remains the odd man out.