There is considerable chatter circulating within the industry that Tuesday night’s match at the Garden against Vegas could determine the fate of coach Alain Vigneault, whose Rangers slipped to 3-7-2 with Saturday night’s 5-4 defeat in Montreal that featured another distressing, no-show first period. That is probably overstating it and more a case of deductive […]
Read MoreWhether intentional or not, what Ryan McDonagh said was an indirect endorsement of his coach, Alain Vigneault — which is hard to come by now that these Rangers are 3-7-2 after another horrid first period resulted in a 5-4 loss to the Canadiens on Saturday night in Montreal. “There’s good energy in here when we […]
Read MoreThe Islanders moved Broadway to Barclays Center on Monday night and put on their own three-act show. In the first 20 minutes, their troubling early-season trend crept back when they allowed a short-handed goal. In the next 20, they did the scoring themselves on the man-advantage and tallied a pair of power-play goals. And in […]
Read MoreHenrik Lundqvist has been asked to win much more important games during his Broadway run that commenced a dozen years ago, but never has the assignment been quite as meaningful in October as it will be Tuesday when the Golden Knights make their Garden debut. “You take a deep breath and try to gather as […]
Read MoreThe Rangers dispatched president Glen Sather, assistant general manager Jim Schoenfeld and pro scout Gilles Leger to Ottawa on Monday to check out the Canadiens-Senators match. Alex Galchenyuk, Montreal’s 23-year-old natural center with top-six potential who was on the fourth line against the Senators just as he was against the Rangers on Saturday, could have […]
Read MoreJaroslav Halak started between the pipes for the second game in a row Monday, marking just the second time this year an Islanders goalie has made consecutive starts. Despite giving up a pair of first-period goals — a short-hander on a bad line change and a power-play strike — the netminder rewarded coach Doug Weight […]
Read MoreOn the cusp of the season-opening puck drop, which is to say before things broke very bad for the Rangers, Alain Vigneault was touting Brendan Smith as one of the guys the coach expected to assume a vocal leadership role in the wake of the summer departures of Bluebloods Dan Girardi and Derek Stepan. “Smitty […]
Read MoreJon Ledecky has figured out the NHL equation for a successful franchise, and he has figured out how to get the answer within his grasp. Now the Islanders co-owner and the rest of the organization are just waiting to see if it’s finally theirs to have. The equation starts easy enough: In order to make […]
Read MoreThe Rangers arrived at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday to play a hockey game they desperately needed to win. But what happened earlier in the afternoon in the city they call home gave their meeting with the Golden Knights a different kind of importance. There was a pregame moment of silence held for the victims […]
Read MoreListen, when a team has all of four victories nearly four weeks and 13 games into the season, it is impossible to discount any single one of them, and why would you ever want to try? The Rangers deserve credit for their 6-4 victory over Vegas on Tuesday night at the Garden just a few […]
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