Despite what has been a rather tumultuous last few weeks, the Rangers would prefer not to make a coaching change, suggests Peter Baugh of The Athletic (subscription link). New York entered tonight’s action having lost 13 of their last 17 games, sliding from being in a playoff spot to seventh in the Metropolitan Division heading into Saturday’s action (which didn’t go well for them either). Even with the recent struggles, the Rangers have played to a .634 points percentage under Peter Laviolette who is approaching the midway point of his three-year contract.
More from around the NHL:
- Senators goaltender Anton Forsberg could return to the lineup on Thursday in Dallas, reports Postmedia’s Bruce Garrioch. He has been out for the last two weeks with what was originally termed as a minor ailment sustained during a pregame warmup. The 32-year-old has a 2.95 GAA with a .889 SV% in his first 11 starts of the season. In the meantime, Ottawa is playing this weekend with their AHL tandem of Mads Sogaard and Leevi Merilainen with Linus Ullmark out for their road trip.
- Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky provided an update on injured goaltender Vitek Vanecek. He told reporters including Sheng Peng of San Jose Hockey Now (Twitter link) that the upper-body injury the netminder is dealing with is a fractured cheek. He’s now listed as out week-to-week. Vanecek has a 3.84 GAA and a .885 SV% in 14 outings this season and could be a possible trade candidate for a team looking for extra goaltending depth when he’s cleared to return as he’s in the final year of his contract.
- Lightning winger Michael Eyssimont is listed as day-to-day with a lower-body injury, relays team reporter Gabby Shirley (Twitter link). The 28-year-old has played in 31 games so far this season, picking up three goals and two assists in just under 11 minutes a night of ice time. Tampa Bay has two open roster spots at the moment so if they need to call up someone from AHL Syracuse, they won’t have to move Eyssimont to IR to do so.
I expect Mikey Eyssimont will be back for tomorrow’s game at home against Montreal or their following game on Thursday at San Jose at the latest. Day-to-day injury status typically is something minor & the injury will recover sooner rather than later.
Time for a change behind the bench for the Rangers. This is not a team that should be in last place at any point. This is not a situation of one or two players having a bad year – it’s the entire team. Somewhere, at some point, he lost the team.
Who cares what Dolan “prefers”? This coaching staff has lost the room. Time to move on from Lavi and if he can’t improve the team, Drury must go as well.
We know that, everybody else know that too but not Drury cause Levi is so great he has got a Cup 200 years ago so next 200 years for Rangers in deep sht.
“the Rangers would prefer not to make a coaching change, suggests Peter Baugh”….so this is a suggestion from a beat writer?? Real solid journalism going on here!!!