We’re eight days away from the season opener and while it is still too early to declare that Filip Chytil has lost the second-line center spot at which he was given first crack, it is assuredly accurate to state that the 20-year-old has done little through training camp and his two exhibition matches to nail it down.
And so, with Brett Howden skating between Vitali Kravtsov and Kaapo Kakko and Ryan Strome lining up in the middle for the first time this preseason in Tuesday’s Garden exhibition match against the Islanders, the Rangers will perhaps have unexpected decisions to confront if Chytil does not pick it up before it starts for real next Thursday.
Because if Chytil isn’t centering one of the top three lines, does that mean No. 72 moves back to wing, where he played 42 games last season…or to Hartford, Conn. to start the season? This becomes the question in the aftermath of David Quinn stating that he does not envision any of his three young centers — Chytil, Howden and Lias Andersson —playing on the fourth line.
“All three of these guys have to make the team and they know that and they understand what they’re going to have to do,” Quinn said. “Obviously if they all do what they’re capable of doing, we’re comfortable having three centers of that age and if we think that gives us the best chance to win, we’ll do that and if not, if all three are playing well enough to be here, we’ll probably have to move one to the wing.
“But there are a lot of moving parts to all that.”
Chytil may have 84 NHL games to his credit, but he still just turned 20 on Sept. 5. He was a phenomenon in camp two years ago, cracking the opening night lineup one month to the day after turning 18. He had a dynamic camp last year. This year, so far, Chytil has been pedestrian. Surely there is more to come from this talented Czech, selected 21st overall in 2017.
The question becomes how quickly? Remember, just because the Rangers’ rebuild trajectory may have been altered by adding Artemi Panarin and Jacob Trouba over the summer, that doesn’t mean that the kids’ respective progress necessarily accelerated as well. This is still about the long-term best interests of each individual youngster, not about doing whatever is expedient to squeeze an extra few points out of the roster in October.
Hence, if Strome is playing either second- or third-line center next week, it won’t necessarily be because he took the job, but because one of the kids could not. A prospect or two may need to start in the shallow end of the pool. If that is the case, so be it.
“These young guys playing the middle, it’s very and up and down, it’s very inconsistent,” said Quinn. “So there might be times when all three of them are playing center if they’re all on the roster depending on how they’re playing. Matchups may come into it. What everybody has to understand is that so much goes into these decisions.
“And you want to put these guys in a situation to succeed, too.”
They’re not the same guy and this is not the same era. But way back when, after Joe Cirella had spent essentially the entire season with the Colorado Rockies in 1981-82 after being selected fifth overall in the ’81 entry draft, the defenseman was sent back to the OHL the following season as a 19-year-old when the franchise moved to New Jersey. It was a painful decision for all parties, but when Cirella returned to the Devils for 1983-84, it became Year II of an 828-game NHL career.
Sink or swim probably is not the most effective means of player development.
“It’s the makeup of the person that [goes into that],” said Quinn. “If you’re sinking, sinking, sinking, sinking, some people can never recover. So I think knowing the player and understanding how much failure you can have, how much damage that could do long-term, I think we all have to be cognizant of that.”
Again. No one is labeling Chytil a failure. But he struggled the second half of last season and hasn’t wowed anyone these last couple of weeks. Meanwhile, Howden has reported as a chiseled-edge specimen after spending his summer working with skills coach John Cara at home in Winnipeg before living for two months with Chris Kreider and soaking in No. 20’s training regimen, and Andersson appears more physically equipped to deal with the NHL than the first two times around.
There are decisions coming. One of them will center on Chytil.