The Rangers have had a light schedule the past week and change or so. Now, they begin a stretch of six games in ten days leading up to Christmas. It starts with a west coast swing though Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary before heading back east for a home and home with lowly Carolina and finally finishing up against the Caps at the Garden. This stretch is going to be incredibly important, both in the standings and beginning to start to figure out how good this team actually is.

It’s been talked to death, but the beginning of this season was marred by significant injuries to multiple key players. A combination of injury fill-ins and guys playing out of their ideal roles have masked the talent level in relation to performance. Now, with guys starting to get healthy, we need to get a look at the defending Eastern Conference Champions for the first time, 25 games into the season.

Out of these six games, it’s about half and half between solid squads and tire fires, a couple home and a few away. It’s a nice cross section of competition, without the distraction of media-driven rivalries, narratives or bright lights of east coast coverage (for the most part). This stretch will be crucial to the Rangers establishing their identity before they need to evaluate their potential positions to upgrade at the deadline.

Due to a combination of injuries and ineffectiveness, the team has limped along to a more or less .500 record. The Metropolitan Division is pretty mediocre, so they haven’t seen their playoff probability diminish, but after the run to the Final last season, the organization should not be happy with just another playoff berth. The team needs to know what it’s capable of.

With the emergence of the Islanders and the generally talented Penguins roster, the Rangers have pretty much resigned themselves to third in the division. This is crucial to stay in that Top 6 picture, and need to put some distance between themselves and the Caps. Henrik Lundqvist needs to be better. Chris Kreider and Mats Zuccarello need to be better. It’s time to figure out what this team should look like come spring time.

It might sound a little premature, but with the uncertainty surrounding Marc Staal, the list of needs at the deadline can’t be clouded in uncertainty and indecision if we are going to try to get over that last hurdle and hoist The Cup. This pre-Christmas stretch is a prime opportunity to show us what kind of team this is.

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