Alternate captain Martin St. Louis will begin his 10-day to two-week absence because of an assumed right-knee injury with Wednesday night’s Garden match against the Blackhawks. And moving into St. Louis’ spot on the line with Derek Stepan and Chris Kreider will be Rick Nash, reuniting that dynamic trio from last season’s Stanley Cup final run.
“Me, Kreids and Nasher, we know how we have success as a line,” Stepan said after Tuesday’s practice in Westchester. “It’s important that we find that.”
Coach Alain Vigneault had been rather set in his lines throughout most of this season, and with the success of the first-place Blueshirts, why wouldn’t he be?
“I think with the way our team has been playing, it’s tough to switch when we’ve been having so much success,” Stepan said. “We have Marty go down, and now we have to make some movements around, and that’s part of a season.”
The trickle-down effect results in putting trade-deadline acquisition Jimmy Sheppard back to the middle, where he played for most of his career with the Wild and the Sharks. Sheppard was relegated to a fourth-line winger role since coming over on March 1 — in the games he wasn’t a healthy scratch — and now he’ll be between speedster Carl Hagelin and the skilled J.T. Miller.
That was the spot occupied by Kevin Hayes, who will be moving up to the left side on the line with Derick Brassard and Mats Zuccarello.
“I think with Marty out, AV decided to switch things around and me and Zucc are pretty excited to play with Kevin,” Brassard said. “Playmaker, and he’s really good with the puck. So we’re going to try to bring some offense.”
Vigneault seems to be going with the four-forward look on his struggling power play, which is 4-for-43 in the past 17 games — with the four goals being an empty-netter from Nash, two Kreider breakaways and a doorstep jam-shot from Dan Girardi — and of 0-for-14 in the past five games.
The first unit at Tuesday’s practice consisted of trade-deadline acquisition Keith Yandle at the point — the lone defenseman, who is not exactly a defensive stalwart — along with Nash, Kreider, Brassard and Stepan up front.
“These guys are so responsible — a lot of forwards, you don’t have that,” Yandle said. “These guys, you see them back there, they’re going to be there to help you out. I don’t think it’s much of a risk having those guys back there.”
Vigneault said the team was not planning a minor-league call-up just yet, with them not having a game between Wednesday and this weekend’s back-to-back, at Carolina and then home to the Ducks, respectively. The team has 12 healthy forwards and six healthy defensemen — the minimum — and Vigneault said that might be reevaluated after Wednesday’s game.
With Cam Talbot having started 18-of-20 games since starting goalie Henrik Lundqvist went down, Vigneault said he has continually spoken with goaltending coach Benoit Allaire about Talbot’s fatigue — and that has prompted a new nickname for Mackenzie Skapski.
“Ben spent a lot of time to make sure, energy-wise — because it was a lot of games — that [Talbot] felt fine,” Vigneault said. “And when we needed the “Buffalo Killer,” we just put Skapski in.”