Thoughts on the most recent Ryan Lindgren injury

The Rangers seemingly dodged a bullet yesterday when it was announced that the most recent Ryan Lindgren injury wasn’t as bad as initially thought, and he will only be out a few weeks. The Rangers have the bodies to weather the storm, and Chad Ruhwedel will draw in tonight and make his Rangers debut.

With just 4 weeks left in the regular season and the Rangers playing some of their best hockey all season, there are mixed views on how to manage Lindgren’s injury. Should they look to get him back as soon as possible? Should he be shut down until the playoffs? As per usual, I have some thoughts.

1. First things first, this is the perfect opportunity to get Lindgren some much needed rest. Lindgren’s numbers have been atrocious this season, and it’s honestly plain to see on the ice as well. The puck has been a grenade on his stick and it’s impacting his defensively play as well.

The hope is that he has been nursing some kind of other injury all season, and not just a poor fit with him and Peter Laviolette’s system. He may have been miscast in his role as a top line defenseman in Laviolette’s system as well. But until we see Miller-Fox and Lindgren-Trouba, we won’t know for sure.

Even if he can come back before the playoffs, he shouldn’t. At best, maybe play the final game of the season to get some game legs back, but that’s it. Let the guy heal.

2. The good news is that the Rangers will get Chad Ruhwedel in the lineup instead of a Ben Harpur type. Ruhwedel is an overall steady, solid defenseman who can make a good first pass. He’s not a top pairing guy by any stretch, but he’s steady enough that Adam Fox can carry him if need be. This assumes the Miller-Schneider pairing sticks.

3. Speaking of pairs sticking and optimizing the defense pairs, there’s a conversation none of us want to have, and that is where Lindgren and Trouba play when they return. And remember, they will play.

As Luker points out, the Rangers have a noticeable jump in shots/attempts for when neither Trouba nor Lindgren are on the ice. Since both are defense-first players, this makes sense, but the stark contrast is alarming. You normally don’t see a 20% difference like this.

Like with Lindgren’s play this season, we don’t know the exact cause, but it is likely a multitude of factors. Defense pairings, as we’ve seen the Miller-Trouba pairing has been wildly inconsistent all year, competition faced, role, learning a new hybrid man/zone defensive zone coverage, learning a new 2-1-2/1-3-1 hybrid forecheck, etc.

The hope is both were dealing with injuries they played through.

4. With both out, this is a perfect time to see if K’Andre Miller–who has been phenomenal in this recent stretch of games and is wildly underappreciated by many fans–meshes with Fox. We’ve been beating this to death for a few years now, that Miller is a top pairing defenseman and simply isn’t getting that kind of love. Miller-Fox should be a solid pair, and they have been solid when together in limited samples.

In this scenario, we’d likely get a reunification of the Zac Jones-Braden Schneider pair, and we’d get Ruhwedel-Erik Gustafsson as the third pair. This is the hope.

5. The reality is we will probably get Gustafsson-Fox, Miller-Schneider, and Ruhwedel-Jones, at least to start the game tonight. We are in unchartered waters right now, as the Blueshirts have never had both Trouba and Lindgren out at the same time with viable NHL bodies ready to fill in.

I’d expect a bunch of tinkering with the pairs to close out the season. There are multiple benefits to this, and it’s not just about finding what will work for the next 3-4 weeks. It’s also about finding other options should the lineup need to be tinkered with in the playoffs.

Options, options, options. Only made possible by depth. The schedule this week does the Rangers no favors, but it will tell them if the depth they have is enough to weather multiple injuries in the playoffs.

6. To reiterate: Expect both Ryan Lindgren and Jacob Trouba to be in the lineup for Game 1 of the first round.