SAN JOSE, Calif. — It was one point to go for the Rangers in order to clinch a playoff spot, and indeed by the time the club took the ice for Tuesday night’s match against the Sharks, a tournament berth already could have been earned with a Bruins regulation loss to the Predators in Boston earlier in the evening.
But the check mark in the standings aside, the Rangers started with changes to their defense pairings for the fifth straight match. Dan Girardi returned to Ryan McDonagh’s right side after sitting out Sunday’s contest in Anaheim while Kevin Klein left the lineup after complaining of [back] “tightness” following his first game in over a month. In addition, Brady Skjei shifted to the right to skate with Marc Staal and Brendan Smith moved back to the left to pair with Nick Holden.
The left-handed Skjei had played six games on his off-side earlier in the season, three with Staal on the mid-November trip to Western Canada, and three with McDonagh in mid-January bridging the bye week. The rookie, who is fourth among NHL defensemen with 25 even-strength assist, had spent the previous two games skating with Smith, the one prior to that with Steven Kampfer, and the two before that with Adam Clendening.
“It’s like [McDonagh]. You’re used to playing that one position. You’re comfortable. This is getting [Skjei] out of his comfort zone, but this is something we wanted to see here in the last couple of games,” coach Alain Vigneault said following the morning skate. “We know that Smitty can play there, we know that Holden can play there.
“You never know what might happen moving forward, so we thought this was a good time to get him a little more experience there and see how he does.”
The McDonagh-Girardi tandem had an especially trying time of it in Los Angeles on Saturday. The Staal-Holden combination, a staple most of the season while intact for 43 games, has struggled as a pair over the past month. It would seem a priority for Vigneault to establish a consistent set of pairings over the final handful of games, though the coach didn’t necessarily identify that as a priority.
“I think I’m going to work on that but at the same time try to balance the fact that we have nine defensemen with the fact that we haven’t clinched yet, etc., etc.,” Vigneault said. “I might take some of those last games to make sure the extra D’s — just like the extra forwards — play at least one to make sure that they get some game situations.
“There’s that balancing act between getting your lines together, getting your D pairs together, getting healthy and making sure certain guys get a little bit of playing time also.”
Vigneault said, however, he did not intend to rest players simply to get them a night or two off in advance of what the club hopes is a two-month grind through the Stanley Cup final.
“I would say ‘rest’ is a big word. If somebody has been playing through a nagging injury, I might, situation permits, give him some down time,” the coach said. “But I’m not a big fan of resting guys. I think you keep playing, you keep your tempo, you keep your momentum.”
The Rangers haven’t established any momentum at all over the past month, winning just six of 15 games (6-7-2) starting on Feb. 26. But a playoff spot essentially has been assured for months and they have been all but been locked into the first wild card for at least a week while playing teams with much more at stake.
The Islanders were in a desperate struggle to make the playoffs when they came to the Garden last Wednesday, the Kings all but needed to run the table in order to have a chance of making the tournament when they faced the Rangers on Saturday, and the Ducks and Sharks (who had lost six straight in regulation) are engaged in a three-way race with the Oilers for the Pacific title.
“We haven’t clinched a playoff spot yet, so I don’t think it’s a good excuse to say we haven’t been as hungry as the teams we’re playing,” Mats Zuccarello said before Tuesday’s match. “You never want bad habits to creep into your game.”