BRENTWOOD, Mo. — The location and the timing of Kevin Shattenkirk’s return to the Rangers lineup was lost on no one.
The Blueshirts will get their big-ticket blueliner back for the New Year’s Eve game in St. Louis on Monday night against the Blues, the franchise with whom he established himself as one of the league’s most talented defensemen. Yet it’s been almost two years since Shattenkirk called this place home, and a lot has changed in the interim.
His affinity for the area has not.
“I’m looking forward to playing [Monday] night,” Shattenkirk said after his team’s quick practice on Sunday afternoon at a humble public rink in Brentwood, just outside the city proper. “Still have some good buddies on the team. This is a place that I called home for a long time and a place I really enjoyed living.”
It’s been a tough road for Shattenkirk since he signed his ballyhooed four-year, $26.6 million free-agent contract with the Rangers in the summer of 2017. He gave a discount in term to the team he grew up rooting for as a kid in New Rochelle, but it has hardly been all roses on Broadway.
Shattenkirk tried to play through a knee injury in his first season, and that did not go well before he shut it down in January. It was slow returning this season, and just about when he was starting to gain some individual momentum, he suffered a separated left shoulder on a hit from J.T. Miller in Tampa on Dec. 10.
The team was a little extra cautious in bringing him back, deciding not to put him in the lineup for the first game of this trip, a physical affair in Nashville against the hulking Predators on Saturday night. That turned out to be a heartening 4-3 win when the Rangers actually held on to a third-period lead, and that got Shattenkirk even more fired up to return.
“I think I’m just hungry to get back and play,” he said. “I feel like I’ve just been missing it, miss being away from the team. [Saturday] night got me really excited, seeing them pull off a big win like that. So just want to get in and hopefully keep that momentum going.”
As much as the players and coaching staff want to win every night, the Rangers are still a franchise in rebuilding mode. Yet at 29 years old, Shattenkirk figured to be part of that plan, with two more years after this one on his deal at $6.65 million per. But now that he hasn’t quite been the player they were hoping for, the limited no-trade clause in his contract is something that might become an issue.
Yet that can’t even be considered, even theoretically, until he returns to the lineup and shows he can still play at a high level.
“He gives us the ability to get the puck out of our end, which is a huge quality to have at this level, the way teams forecheck,” coach David Quinn said. “When he’s on his game, we get out of our end quicker. And the thing that I like before he got hurt, I thought he was defending well, too. We missed him for sure when he was gone.”
Shattenkirk also has an unmistakable leadership quality, and despite being out for so long, he was part of the group that led a players-only meeting before the game in Nashville that led to their fourth win in the past 15 games (4-6-5).
“It was a bit awkward for me,” Shattenkirk said. “I had good things to say. But when you’re removed from the team and you’re not going through the ups and downs with the guys, it’s hard to relate. Really, a lot of what we talked about extended past my time out [from] when I was in the lineup. It was just really a matter of us keeping our confidence.”
The same could be said for him individually, and it was slowly coming back before he got hurt. Now it’s something the Rangers could use as they go forward and try to make the rest of the season a little more palatable.
And the timing of the return makes it all the more poignant.
“It’s going to be a bit emotional,” Shattenkirk said, “but fun to be coming back into the lineup in a place that I’m familiar with.”