The Rangers started this season with a lot of uncertainty. No one knew exactly what the team was going to look like after training camp, or if a handful of new additions were going to be able to contribute right away.
“I can honestly tell you that we weren’t sure that every player that we were going to bring in was going to be able to make a contribution,” coach Alain Vigneault said earlier this week.
Things keep turning up roses for the Blueshirts (15-6-1), as they picked up Matt Puempel off waivers from the Senators and he scored in his first game with the team, Friday afternoon’s emphatic 3-2 victory over the Flyers in Philadelphia. That was a big win at the quarter pole of the season, having suffered their worst loss just two nights prior, a 6-1 drubbing at the hands of the Penguins.
Vigneault asked his team to focus on having a good response to that defeat, show character in bouncing back from what amounted to an embarrassing effort. That’s exactly what they did, and now are feeling good again as they got the day off Saturday in preparation for Puempel’s revenge game against Ottawa at the Garden on Sunday night.
There were a few choice words from Puempel about his time with the Senators, who drafted him 24th-overall in 2011. The 12:32 of ice time that Vigneault gave him Friday — including 1:46 of power play time — was more than he had gotten in 13 games he played for Senators coach Guy Boucher earlier this season. He made it clear Boucher lambasted him every time he made a mistake, and in New York, “they let you play to your strengths.”
The matchup would have been a lot juicer had Mika Zibanejad been healthy. A broken leg suffered this past Sunday will keep him out six-to-eight weeks. Zibanejad was the biggest offseason change, having come over in a trade that sent Derick Brassard off Broadway and back to his hometown.
It made the Rangers younger, faster and less expensive, and if Brassard has brought some veteran leadership to the young Senators, then it could make up for the three goals and nine points he has in 20 games thus far.
Brassard, 29, was a known quantity for Vigneault and the Rangers, having been integral to their three runs to the conference finals in four years, including the 2014 Stanley Cup final. But his five-year, $25 million deal became a little onerous, the $5 million annual salary-cap hit over the next three seasons being one the Rangers were happy to cut in half with the addition of Zibanejad, 23, and the one year remaining on his deal with a hit of $2.625 million.
The hope from Vigneault was that Zibanejad could grow as a player with the Rangers, and his quickness was an element the team was longing for. After a rather fast start, Zibanejad’s game began to sink, and it was only starting to come back around just before he was injured.
Now he joins another newcomer, 21-year-old Russian winger Pavel Buchnevich, who is out two-to-three weeks with a back ailment. Buchnevich had lived up to all preseason expectations — if not exceeded them — in his first year playing the North American game.
There also has been the ascension of Jimmy Vesey, the free agent out of Harvard who chose the Rangers and has seemingly found a home. Though Vesey’s game has dropped off since a hot start, and he had been benched late in games by Vigneault, his ability to contribute right away has been a big factor in the Blueshirts depth up front and their ability to get out to a league-best scoring rate of 3.86 goals per game.
Same can be said for Brandon Pirri and Michael Grabner, the latter who is toying with the league lead for goals with 12 through the first 22 games.
So it has been an interesting start for these Rangers, who have shown character and depth and are getting contributions from up and down the lineup. How it will continue is anyone’s guess, but the uncertainty is slowly fading.