Rangers players slowly trickling in for optional skates as Phase 2 begins

As Phase 2 for the NHL’s relaunch plan begins, the NY Rangers are slowly starting to trickle in to skate. As expected, it’s mostly guys who stayed local during the COVID-19 quarantine that are showing up. Yesterday the group was Chris Kreider, Marc Staal, Brendan Lemieux, Brendan Smith, Adam Fox, and Phil Di Giuseppe. Igor Shesterkin also began his training down in Florida.

Today it looks like Artemi Panarin headlines the group that will arrive at the training facility. It is expected more players will be joining him, assuming their COVID-19 tests come back negative. That’s the key here: Any person that enters the facility must be COVID-19 negative.

Players that returned home overseas are not expected to arrive any time soon. Henrik Lundqvist is one of those who returned to Sweden, so he won’t be on New York ice any time soon. The good news for him is that Sweden never shut down, so he’s been able to train.