Regarding the Rangers, who hit the top of the stretch a nose out of a playoff spot with 32 games to go beginning with Thursday’s match at the Garden against the Maple Leafs:
1. Based on point-per-game numbers, the Penguins project as the conference’s second wild-card spot with 92 points, but let’s add another four to account for enhanced performance by any of the handful of competitors for playoff berths.
If 96 points is the realistic bar the Blueshirts will have to clear, that means a minimum 41 points (20-11-1) are required the rest of the way. An arduous task, yes, with the twin realities of trade-deadline distractions and a 6-9-1 record over the 16 matches leading into the All-Star break, but the Rangers did go 19-7-3 for 41 points in 29 games from Oct. 31 through Jan. 6.
So it would not be unprecedented for this group.
2. The Rangers will have a decision to make after the season on J.T. Miller, a pending arbitration-eligible free agent who is in line for a multi-year deal worth between $4.5 million and 4.7 million per to keep No. 10 on Broadway for the long term. Miller is one of a plethora of players who has failed to meet expectations, regressing even in committing the same fundamental mistakes with the puck in his own end and the neutral zone without an offsetting payoff at the other end.
Obviously Miller bears much of the responsibility. But moving from wing to center, then back, and then back again to compensate for the club’s shortcomings in the middle, has not helped the passionate, hard-edged 24-year-old.
Miller has played 23 full games at center plus five others in which he has shifted for at least a full period to the middle. For the sake of this season and in order to have a base off which to make a critical personnel decision, Miller needs to remain on the wing — where he can showcase his instincts, size and speed — the rest of the way.
It would be a crime for this organization to give up on a still-developing player of this caliber and these physical assets at this young an age, and a more heinous one if the Rangers lose Miller because of a decision colored by his faulty play in the middle.
3. And the necessity to move Miller back to center might well be obviated anyway, if, as is anticipated, the Rangers promote Lias Andersson from the AHL Wolf Pack before all that long. The 19-year-old seventh-overall pick in last June’s draft has recorded two assists in his first three North American pro games.
There is also the possibility 18-year-old Filip Chytil, with 20 points (seven goals, 13 assists) in 24 games overall and eight (two-six) in his last seven matches, could force his way back onto Broadway by the end of the year.
4. Jimmy Vesey is another one who has not lived up to expectations in his sophomore NHL season. There have been flashes, but an absence of consistency from the blue-collar laborer who gets his nose dirty around the net as well as any of his teammates. Truth be told, it is difficult to reconcile No. 26’s performance with the near-universal interest around the league in signing him when the Harvard product became an unrestricted free agent in August 2016.
Again, Vesey bears a portion of the responsibility, but at the same time he has bounced from line to line and center to center, getting 256 five-on-five minutes with David Desharnais, 175 with Kevin Hayes, 81 with Boo Nieves and 23 with Mika Zibanejad, per naturalstattrick.com.
In addition, Vesey has gotten under 13:00 in 23 of 50 games, including six under 10:00. There is always the chicken-and-egg syndrome at work here, and Vesey does need to assert himself more regularly. But it is always a challenge for a young Ranger to receive a consistent heaping of ice time under the current regime.
Vesey, too, is coming up on arbitration-eligible restricted free agency, though his numbers won’t approach Miller’s.
5. If there is a roster reconstruction, keep an eye out for John Gilmour, the 24-year-old lefty defenseman who on Sunday won the AHL’s fastest skater competition in advance of Monday’s All-Star game.
Signed as a free agent out of Providence College over the summer of 2016, the mobile Gilmour has already matched his full-season totals from last year with six goals and 19 assists for 25 points in 41 games for Hartford.