The Rangers don’t play enough of a hard-edged game, I’ve been clear on my thoughts about that all year, but please, sitting Pavel Buchnevich at this stage of the season to save room for Tanner Glass just doesn’t make sense.
Yet that appears the plan for Friday’s match at the Garden when the Blueshirts meet the Panthers in the front end of a back-to-back that concludes in Minnesota on Saturday night.
Glass has been one of the team’s more effective players in the five games since his March 5 promotion from the AHL Wolf Pack and Buchnevich has indeed struggled to find “consistency,” as coach Alain Vigneault noted following Thursday’s practice in which Buchnevich skated on a unit with designated scratches Brandon Pirri and Matt Puempel.
But what better time than now, with the Rangers essentially locked into the Eastern Conference’s first wild-card spot with 12 games remaining in the regular season, for the 21-year-old rookie to work on his craft and gain experience in these grinding type of matches that come with the territory in March and April?
It is the same now as it was when Buchnevich was dispatched to Hartford in late February after a string of games he did not play and was recalled only because of injuries to the returning Jesper Fast and the returned Michael Grabner, but even more so because of his team’s position in the standings.
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Rangers coach Alain Vigneault will make a decision this weekend…
If the Russian doesn’t play now, if he is not given the chance now to rectify his game and improve in one-on-ones and work both with and without the puck, how can he be expected to contribute in the playoffs, when the Blueshirts might even need him?
Here’s the thing: These final dozen games over the season’s remaining 24 days should constitute a laboratory for Prof. Vigneault. The Rangers are in a rare, perhaps unique position of not facing extreme pressure to win every night.
The coach should take advantage of this opportunity to rest veterans strategically — Mats Zuccarello, whose season began with Norway’s Olympic qualifying camp in late August, most prominently comes to mind — and to give his young guys an education in late-season hockey.
Vigneault promotes skill at every opportunity. Except, it seems, when the Rangers are in one way or another demoting Buchnevich.
It just doesn’t make sense.