NY Rangers Game 3 Open Thread: Hello, old friend
The Rangers and Devils square off today, as the Rangers face off against old friend Lindy Ruff. Ruff was hired by the Devils this offseason as their head coach. This was generally met with applause from Ranger fans, as Ruff had been the subject of many issues on the defensive end.
Ruff teams, despite his reputation, are generally poor defensively. As Rob pointed out in the preview, they do have good goaltending that could mask defensive issues. That said, the Rangers do need to get two points in this one, as the Devils are not a good team. Outside of Hughes, there is not much depth at all.
Devils Lines
Yegor Sharangovich-Jack Hughes-Kyle Palmieri
Andreas Johnsson-Pavel Zacha-Nikita Gusev
Miles Wood-Travis Zajac-Jesper Boqvist
Janne Kuokkanen-Michael McLeod-Nathan Bastian
Ryan Murray-PK Subban
Dmitri Kulikov-Damon Severson
Ty Smith-Matt Tennyson
Mackenzie Blackwood gets the start.
Rangers Lines (projected)
Chris Kreider–Mika Zibanejad–Pavel Buchnevich
Artemi Panarin–Ryan Strome–Alexis Lafreniere
Phil Di Giuseppe–Filip Chytil–Kaapo Kakko
Brendan Lemieux–Brett Howden– Julien Gauthier
Ryan Lindgren–Jacob Trouba
Jack Johnson–Adam Fox
K’Andre Miller-Brendan Smith
PP1: Panarin-Zibanejad-Strome-Kreider-Fox
PP2: Howden-Buchnevich-Lemieux-Lafreniere-Trouba
PK Forwards: Kreider, Strome, Howden, Zibanejad
PK Defense: Trouba, Johnson, Lindgren, Fox
Alex Georgiev gets the start.
Injuries/Scratches: Tony DeAngelo (healthy), Kevin Rooney (healthy)
Crazy Prediction: Hughes and Kakko drop the gloves.
Game time is 7pm.
Pretty ridiculous that Claude’s kid and hands of stone Howden are on the pp over Kakko and Filip
PP2 gets so little time that it sets up for a bit of a grinding puck possession shift.
I could understand Brendan Lemieux as the net-front presence on the PP2 unit, but Brett Howden?!? He has the compete level of a hamster on a spinning wheel.
PS – When will the Systems Previews of the opponent return to GDTs? I found them informative for what to expect style-wise from the team the Rangers are facing that night.
Back to sleep we go
LoL