So it begins, one more season of Rangers hockey.
With Thursday night’s opener against the Avalanche at the Garden, so comes the start of another campaign with high expectations, with Henrik Lundqvist in goal, with Alain Vigneault behind the bench. Some old faces are gone, some new faces have moved in, and finally it’s time to see where they stack up against the rest of the league.
“Every year, you go into a new challenge,” Lundqvist said after Wednesday’s practice. “You’ve been away from the game for a few months, you miss it — you miss the action, the adrenaline you feel out there. That never changes. You look forward to see how we’re gong to respond as a group and personally after being away for a few months. But it’s always a great feeling to go out there and enjoy the atmosphere.”
This team still is billed as Henrik Lundqvist and the Rangers, even though the King is 35 years old and still has not felt the heft of the Stanley Cup over his head. But there is a dramatically altered cast of characters around him now, with Derek Stepan and Dan Girardi no longer around and newcomers Kevin Shattenkirk and Filip Chytil trying to start off their Broadway tenures on the right foot.
“It will change the dynamic a little bit in the room but [I’m] also looking forward to getting to know all these new players,” Lundqvist said. “All around, it’s just a very exciting feeling to start up the season.”
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Maybe the second-brightest spotlight is going to be on Shattenkirk, the righty defenseman and major offseason signing who took a lesser contract to play for the team he grew up rooting for as a kid in New Rochelle. Paired with captain Ryan McDonagh, there is going to be no hiding from the pressure for Shattenkirk once the puck drops in front of more than 120 of his family members and friends.
“This is going to be the last time I get to play my first game with the Rangers,” Shattenkirk said. “So I think I’m really going to try to enjoy that and put out a good effort.”
McDonagh also wants to help his new blueline mate get off to a good start, knowing how much is expected of the two of them right off the bat.
“I’m anxious. I know he’s anxious,” McDonagh said. “We want to work well together. We know we’re a big part of this team’s success going forward here. So I think we just have to let our instincts take over. We’re two guys who like to move the puck and get up the ice, so have to play to our strengths here and be creative.”
Vigneault also is anxious to see where his team stacks up, helping general manager Jeff Gorton continue to revamp this roster on the fly. The goal was to get younger and faster — again — and do it all while not losing the ability to compete in a Metropolitan Division that is vastly improved from top to bottom.
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With so many new faces, Vigneault is well aware they need to get off to a good start to gain the momentum needed to achieve their first goal — getting into the playoffs.
“We’re like every team in the NHL — we’ll take 10, 20 games to sort out what we have exactly,” Vigneault said. “But at the same time, we talked to our team that we need a good start to this season. We have to play well.”
It begins with three games in four nights, following Thursday’s opener with a trip to Toronto to take on the young and explosive Maple Leafs on Saturday night before playing host to the Canadiens in the Garden on Sunday night. After what has seemingly been a long preseason, with eight days since they played their last exhibition game, the time finally is here to play games for real.
This also normally is the time Vigneault mentions how no one predicted them to be very good, but after coming back from the team-building trip to Lake Placid on Tuesday, the coach had yet to see the pundits’ prognostications — not that it mattered to him.
“Are we supposed to be good?” he asked. “I can tell you I think we’re going to be a good team, and that’s what matters.”