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Preseason hockey is nearly upon us, making for an excellent time to scope out some new players and old vets to get an early assessment of how things are going to shake out once the Rangers open the regular season against the Islanders on October 13th.

This preseason should be particularly informative, given the influx of new young talent at forward and the way the defensive corps has stayed largely the same, except for the departure of Keith Yandle. We should be able to glean some answers, or at least begin to understand how things are going to look, for better or for worse, once thee regular season gets underway.

Let’s start off with some good news: the Rangers have something of a youth movement going at forward, and a general influx of talent players battling for spots in the Rangers’ bottom-six. One of the biggest questions heading into this season is how Alain Vigneault is going to handle Pavel Buchnevich and Jimmy Vesey, so it should be interesting to see where he plays them. While I would love to see a Buch/Hayes/Vesey line materialize I doubt AV plays the two rookies together, so it’s more likely we’ll see them spread out.

One of them is likely to wind up on the wing of Mika Zibanejad, another exciting player new to the Rangers. Zibanejad’s speed and hands are a welcome addition to the Rangers, and despite the soreness left over from Derick Brassard’s departure there’s a lot to like about the new young center. Zibanejad is most likely to slot in in the top-six, and I would imagine one of either Buchnevich or Vesey winds up on his wing, along with one of the veteran forwards, possibly Chris Kreider or Mats Zuccarello.

Speaking of veteran forwards, the Rangers find themselves in an interesting position with Rick Nash. While he is undoubtedly one of the more talented of the Rangers’ wingers, playing a strong two way game and generating offense wherever he goes, suffice to say that last season was something of a downturn for him, especially given the way he performed the preceding season.

While it’s too far to say that he played poorly last season, he certainly would like to have a rebound season, as he mentioned to Steve Zipay recently. Especially with all of the trade rumors surrounding the 32-year old winger this past summer, Nash will be looking to prove himself useful to the team, so it should be interesting to see how he performs in the preseason and early regular season.

There’s also the question of who replaces Oscar Lindberg while he’s out injured. Lindberg, who started last preseason with a standout performance and carried it into the early regular season, would seem likely to be the blueshirts’ fourth line center, but fo the fact that he’s out recovering from hip surgery this offseason.

In his stead AV has suggested that either Josh Jooris or Max Lapierre may take his place. While I’m not particularly alarmed about the suggestion of Lapierre taking Lindberg’s place on the fourth line it is mildly concerning given the amount of talent AV has at his disposal in the forward corps.

With all of the forward-thinking moves that management made this offseason to improve the team’s depth up front, it would be disappointing to see AV make a regressive move like playing Lapierre as the fourth line center. In any event Lindberg is likely to take whoever’s place once he returns from injury, so again it’s not overly concerning.

Now for the fun stuff: the defense. Last season the Rangers’ blueline was their obvious weakness, Keith Yandle notwithstanding, and while rumors swirled regarding major shakeups and potential moves regarding Dan Girardi or Marc Staal at the draft, nothing materialized. AV has voiced his confidence in both defensemen, and Dan Girardi has made comments regarding his potential to bounce back.

With the departure of Yandle too, the Rangers are going to be leaning more heavily on Ryan McDonagh to move the puck (as mentioned in Larry Brooks’ recent column) and will look to young guns Brady Skjei and Dylan McIlrath to step up as well.

While I’m not of the opinion that players of Girardi and Staal’s age typically have bounce back season, and even if they do rebound they can certainly still be subpar on the ice, for the sake of this team let’s hope they do return to form on some level. With the absence of Yandle, the Rangers are in a pickle regarding their ability to make quick zone exits and move the puck from one end to the other, and as Russia has demonstrated at this World Cup of Hockey, all the forward depth in world is relatively useless if you can’t get the puck into the offensive zone.

It should be interesting to scout out this defensive group in the preseason to say the least, but I’m holding out cautious optimism that with the right deployment this defensive group can be made to look at least somewhat average.

With all of this hype and anticipation about the preseason, it’s worth noting that it’s a small sample of games not always indicative of how the team is going to play in the regular season. It’s useful for scouting individual players, and can be revelatory with regards to how the coaching staff views certain positions, but it’s important to remember that we won’t really know what this team is until a few weeks into the regular season.

Even then the Rangers have shown us in the past that their play early in the season is not always indicative of their overall ability, as last year’s early win streak and later cooling off period showed. Still, I know that I’m excited to see how things pan out when the Rangers take the ice on Tuesday.

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