The Rangers nearly followed up their disappointing weekend with a second straight disappointing loss. But after blowing a two-goal lead against the Blues in two minutes and 14 seconds, the Rangers rebounded to win a game against a tough opponent.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. Alexis Lafreniere scored again on Wednesday. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how a former first overall pick could have so much success playing top-six minutes alongside two actual NHLers. It doesn’t add up. It’s almost as if playing under 10 minutes per game with fringe NHLers and career two-wayers isn’t productive to the growth and progression of a player with an elite playmaking skillset. Who would have known? Certainly not David Quinn last season, and certainly not Gerard Gallant for the majority of this season to date.

Lafreniere scoring yet another 5-on-5 goal since he isn’t allowed to play on the power play (it’s a rule not Gallant’s choice) means he now has has many 5-on-5 goals as Connor McDavid through their first 108 games. Luckily for McDavid he was drafted by a true last-place team and given top-line minutes and infinite power-play time right away, while Lafreniere has spent most of his NHL career playing third- and fourth-line minutes with players like Filip Chytil, Julien Gauthier and Kevin Rooney.

2. Ryan Strome scored his 12th of the season at 16:36 of the second, and the Blues had the Rangers right where they wanted them. Despite going on a Rangers-esque run by not having a shot for nearly 10 minutes in the first, a two-goal deficit against the Rangers was a good omen for the Blues, the way it has been for several other teams this season.

Igor Shesterkin had been perfect (yet again) through the first 37:30 of the game, but then the wheels fell off, and they fell off in seemingly a blink of an eye. For those at the Garden who wanted to get a headstart on the second intermission concession line or wanted to get in and out of the bathroom before the end-of-the-period rush, they missed out on watching the Rangers implode.

3. After Chris Kreider turned the puck over just outside the Rangers’ zone, the Blues quickly regrouped in the neutral zone. Brandon Saad and Ryan O’Reilly were able to evade the combination of a half-assed backchecking attempt by Mika Zibanejad and Ryan Lindgren coasting through his own zone to generate a 2-on-1 below the top of the circles. Saad made a nice pass around Adam Fox for O’Reilly to slide into the net.

4. One minute and seven seconds later the game was tied. Ivan Barbashev took a long outlet pass from Jordan Kyrou and broke down the left side, rifling a perfectly-placed shot over the left shoulder of Shesterkin. It was the only place Barbashev could shoot to potentially score from his angle and he did so.

Then with 16 seconds left in the second, Gallant had his fourth line on the ice against the Blues’ top line, and it wasn’t by accident as for the last week Gallant has opted to use his fourth line to defend against the opposition’s best line. Does it make sense? No. But neither does suggesting Filip Chytil should play like Mika Zibanejad, which is what Gallant did prior to the game.

O’Reilly camped out behind the net, an homage to Wayne Gretzky during what was a TNT-televised game. Fox, Lindgren and Ryan Reaves all got caught in the slot puck-watching like a trio of pylons and David Perron slid in to the left of Shesterkin untouched to bang in a one-timer from O’Reilly.

5. The three Blues goals came in a span of two minutes and 14 seconds and on three consecutive shots. Scoring on three consecutive in any game is improbable. Doing so against Shesterkin would seem impossible. It’s like Greg McKegg scoring a hat trick. Scratch that. It’s like McKegg scoring a goal.

6. New father Patrik Nemeth tied the game with 12:33 to go after Ville Husso found himself sprawled out on the ice out of the crease after from defending a Dryden Hunt-Strome partial 2-on-1. Nemeth sent a loose puck at the top of the zone toward the empty net to make it 3-3. (At that point the Rangers’ in-game money line was +105, and you better believe I took it.)

A little over four minutes later, the Rangers got a gift power play when Colton Parayko shot the puck over the glass for a delay of game. With 48 seconds left on the man advantage, Gallant wisely called a timeout to give his first unit a rest and a chance to score the go-ahead goal. The timeout worked brilliantly as Artemi Panarin took the puck to the left half-wall and fed Fox for a one-timer. Kreider beautifully tipped in Fox’s shot to give the Rangers the lead.

7. After assisting on the Strome and Fox goals, Panarin scored one of his own, an empty-netter to put away the Blues and clinch a 5-3 win. It was Panarin’s 80th home game as a Ranger and the 38th time he has posted a multi-point game (47.5 percent). Jaromir Jagr had 47 multi-point home games in 138 games as a Ranger.

8. There was a lot of talk on TNT on Wednesday night about whether or not the Rangers should “go for it” this season and trade away some of their abundance of assets and use up some of their abundance of cap space. The answer from everyone should be an unequivocal yes. The Rangers haven’t reached the postseason in five years. (Sorry, the 2020 bubble doesn’t count.) It’s been four years since The Letter. Just because they have experienced an inordinate amount of success this season (thanks single-handedly to Shesterkin) doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again next season. The Rangers wouldn’t even have to regress as a team in 2022-23 to not be a postseason team. They would just have to have Shesterkin be a superstar rather than have one of the best seasons a goaltender has ever had in the history of the league.

When given an opportunity like the Rangers have, a team should always “go for it.” There’s no trade or roster shuffle that will guarantee the Rangers anything in the postseason, but not doing anything will enhance their chances at a short-lived postseason even if Shesterkin continues to play at an unprecedented level all spring and into the summer.

9. There’s no guarantee because there’s no postseason series in the East that will be anything other than a tiring battle, and there isn’t one team in particular any of the eight teams in the conference would want to play in any round. Whichever team comes out of the East this season will have truly earned it. It won’t be like three years ago when the Bruins were able to get by the Maple Leafs and then had a Blue Jackets team who had just won their Stanley Cup by sweeping the 1-seed Lightning, followed by facing a young Hurricanes team that arrived early and was more occupied with planning their next postgame center-ice celebration. The Rangers don’t have the fortune of playing in the West where six of the eight teams currently holding a playoff spot have as many or fewer points than the East’s current 8-seeded Capitals.

10. There will never be a perfect time to go for it. Now is as good of a time as any and as good of a season as any for the Rangers to “go for it.” They aren’t a juggernaut or the juggernaut in the league because right now there really isn’t one, unless you consider the Avalanche to be that team, when this Avalanche core hasn’t won anything and has lost in the second round for three straight years. It’s unfortunate the Rangers’ rebuild has coincided with the Hurricanes evolving into a force, the Penguins retooling on the fly, the Panthers emerging as a contender and the core of Maple Leafs entering their prime. Not to mention the Lightning coming off a second straight championship and sitting atop of the Atlantic.

The Rangers will always be able to find a reason to not go for it or to wait until their young roster is a little older or a little more experienced, but they would be doing themselves and their fans a disservice.

The weekend (well, including Thursday) started out promising for the Rangers. But after their most complete win of the season against the Capitals, they were shut out by the Penguins and outplayed in a disappointing loss to the Canucks.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. Igor Shesterkin is going to win the Vezina. If he doesn’t then the entire process for selecting the best goalie in the game needs to be rethought. But for as easily as he will win the Vezina is how easily I truly believe he should win the Hart.

What Shesterkin is doing in net for the Rangers is something Henrik Lundqvist never did, and Lundqvist was the top goalie of his era. That’s because what Shesterkin is doing has only ever been done once … in history. Shesterkin has a .941 save percentage this season and with a minimum of 30 games played, that feat has only ever been accomplished by Jacques Plante.

2. Here are the numbers from Domenik Hasek’s back-to-back MVP seasons:

1996-97: 37-20-10, 2.27, .930

1997-98: 33-23-13, 2.09, .932

(Hasek’s best season was actually in 1998-99 when he didn’t win the Hart: 30-18-14, 1.87, .937)

Here are Shesterkin’s numbers from this season:

2021-22: 25-6-3, 1.95, .941

3. To me, the Most Valuable Player is the player whose team’s season would have been drastically different if they were removed from the roster. Sure, Connor McDavid, Jonathan Huberdeau and Auston Matthews are all having great seasons, but Shesterkin is having a historic season and if you remove him from the Rangers, you get a lot of games like you got on Sunday night in the team’s 5-2 loss to the Canucks. When Shesterkin was injured in early December, the Rangers 4-3-1, and their four wins came against 25th-, 29th- and 32nd-ranked teams in the league. The Rangers are 11-5-1 against current playoff teams when Shesterkin plays and 0-7-1 when he doesn’t. They are 25-6-3 when he’s in net and 8-9-2 when he isn’t.

Like Lundqvist did for 15 years, Shesterkin is single-handedly carrying the Rangers to success, has them third in the Met and headed to the (real) postseason for the first time in five years.

4. Thursday’s 4-1 win over the Capitals was the Rangers’ most complete and impressive win of the season. Between the Rangers getting four goals from four different sources and all coming in 5-on-5, and Shesterkin stopping 36 of 37 shots in yet another masterful performance, it was as good a win as the team will have all year.

“I thought we had a lot of chances,” Capitals coach Peter Laviolette said after the game. “Some of them were good looks, chances that you want to get, redirects, partial breakaways, shots right through the slot … we just couldn’t beat him (Shesterkin), not tonight.”

Not on most nights, Pete. It’s OK, the rest of the league isn’t really beating him either. Unfortunately, Shesterkin lost the shutout bid with 1:02 left in the game on a goal from Alexander Ovechkin, of course.

5. Alexis Lafreniere had a goal and an assist against the Capitals as he continues to shine playing with Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider, despite playing on his off-wing. It’s hard to believe the 2020 first overall pick is experiencing success playing top-six minutes and playing with actual quality NHLers. Lafreniere has four goals in his last eight games with his top-shelf blast from Sunday night against the Canucks on a feed from Zibanejad being the highlight of those four. He’s now on an about-20-goal pace over 82 games and that’s with having played less than 10 minutes in six of his 51 games played this season and less than 12 minutes in 14 games, and close to zero power-play time. Only 16 players in the NHL have more even-strength goals than Lafreniere since the start of last season.

When Kaapo Kakko returns, I need:

20-93-13
10-16-24

It has to be that and it has to stay that.

6. The Rangers’ loss to the Canucks on Sunday was disappointing because they couldn’t finish for a second straight day. (At least not until they were already down by four goals.) The Rangers were outplayed for the first five-or-so minutes of the game before dominating the the rest of the first period. If not for Thatcher Demko playing like Shesterkin, the Rangers could have cruised in the second and third to an easy win. But for the second consecutive day, the Rangers got the absolute best from the opposing goalie and eventually the Canucks got to Alexandar Georgiev the way every team does, and the Rangers didn’t respond until it was too late.

Georgiev isn’t Shesterkin and I don’t trust him and assume the worst for the Rangers when he’s in net. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be a starting goalie somewhere. It just means he’s likely unable to be the Rangers’ backup. It’s not easy to go weeks without seeing game action, like Georgiev does, and be expected to step in and play at your best. It’s an art, and it’s an art that Georgiev hasn’t come close to mastering and maybe he never will. When Shesterkin was out for an extended period of time and Georgiev was able to get consistent starts, he was at his best. But prior to Sunday (Feb. 27), Georgiev hadn’t started since Jan. 27. An entire month between starts. The Canucks’ goals Georgiev “would want back” aren’t so bad when you consider the layoff he just went through.

7. I don’t know who’s more fortunate: Greg McKegg who has gotten in the lineup 33(!) times this season or Dryden Hunt, who continues to play in the top-six and on a line with Artemi Panarin. (Poor Panarin. On a line with Hunt and Ryan Strome and he’s on a 96-point pace.) Neither makes sense, especially since Filip Chytil was an inexplicable healthy scratch on both Saturday and Sunday. Not that Chytil and Hunt play the same position, but a lineup spot is a lineup spot, and if Chytil isn’t going to be in the lineup over either of those two or Morgan Barron then I’m not sure what we’re doing here.

When asked after Saturday 1-0 loss to the Penguins why Chytil didn’t play, Gerard Gallant said, “He was fine. He’s fine. Just that the team played really well the night before.”

With the team coming off the most impressive win of the season, it’s understandable to not want to change things up. I get it. (But it’s not like McKegg or Barron had some significant impact on the win.)

8. But then the Rangers lose to the Penguins. Not only lose, but are shut out. (And yes, it took Tristan Jarry having the game of his life for the Rangers to be shut out, but it also took another heroic Shesterkin effort to keep it a one-goal game.) The Rangers don’t score a goal on Saturday, and Gallant stays with the same lineup on Sunday?

Gallant has done a lot of the same, if not the exact same things that David Quinn did as coach of the Rangers that led to his dismissal. Because the Rangers currently hold a playoff berth and would have to endure a catastrophic finish over their remaining 29 games to miss the postseason, a lot of the decisions Gallant makes get to fly under the radar because of Shesterkin’s play. That doesn’t make it OK. It makes it worse. McKegg can’t be in the lineup. Lafreniere can’t be removed from the top six. Kakko has to be in the top six when he returns. And whatever those late-game decisions against the Penguins were on Saturday can’t happen.

9. The first of those late-game decisions was putting the fourth line on the ice with 9:32 remaining and an offensive-zone faceoff coming out of a TV timeout. The second was going back to the fourth line for another offensive-zone faceoff with 6:05 remaining. Did Gallant think some set play off the draw with that unit was going to lead to the game-tying goal? Did he think his fourth line would give his team the best chance to tie the game? He likely did it because he spent the weekend playing the fourth line against the opposition’s best line, and while it worked out on Thursday, it can’t be a consistent strategy since it will lead to the Rangers’ fourth line leading the team in time on ice. And it can’t be a strategy when trailing by a goal and less than 10 minutes left in the game.

10. I like Gallant. It’s easy to like him coming off of Quinn. But they are very similar in their lineup decisions, and if not for Shesterkin, Rangers fans would be wondering why a coaching change was even made.

Yes, Gallant has gotten an overall pass because the Rangers are having a fantastic season, even though the underlying numbers suggest they would be having more of an Islanders-type season if  Shesterkin was even above average rather than being otherworldly. 

David Quinn is the head coach of the Rangers, and right now, he can’t be happy with his team’s 9-0 win over the Flyers. That’s because he had nothing to do with it, and now everyone everywhere is questioning whether the team is better off without him.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. I don’t think David Quinn should be the head coach of the Rangers, and if you frequent Keefe To The City, you will know that’s nothing new. I don’t think Quinn is the right guy for the job now, and I certainly don’t think he’s the right guy to lead this team into future when they are supposed to contend as quickly as next season. His lineup decisions, in-game strategies and ice-time decisions are too much to overcome. He has made too many head-scratching choices between last season and this season for me to change my mind about him.

2. I don’t think the 9-0 win over the Flyers on Wednesday was completely a result of Quinn not being on the bench, but I don’t think it was a complete coincidence either. I don’t think it was an accident that Mika Zibanejad scored a hat trick, a natural hat trick at that, after having three goals in the first 27 games of the season in which he has been benched and criticized publicly by Quinn. I don’t think it was by chance the Rangers happened to put together one of the most dominant offensive performances in franchise history in a game in which they didn’t have to worry about the lines being shuffled from minute to minute or have to fear a lack of ice time for a momentary lapse of judgment.

3. There was always going to be sarcastic comments about Quinn if the Rangers won by any score on Wednesday. Shutting out the Flyers and scoring nine goals in the process was the absolute worst-case scenario for any Quinn fans, Quinn himself and the Rangers’ front office, which is definitely still unsure if Quinn should be given a fourth season at the helm when the Rangers are expected to shed the “rebuilding” title from in front of the team name.

4. Six different Rangers scored in the rout of the Flyers. Brendan Lemieux for the second time this season, Artemi Panarin for the seventh, Pavel Buchnevich for the ninth and 10th (exactly two minutes apart), Jacob Trouba for the first, Zibanejad for the fourth, fifth and sixth and Filip Chytil for the fourth. Just a nonchalant five-point night for Zibanejad without the head coach who has benched him and who has publicly called him out. Freakin’ Brett Howden got on the scoresheet in the game. That’s how much of a team effort this one was.

5. If you’re Quinn, you have to be sick over Wednesday’s performance. Sure, his team played well, picked up two points and is that much closer to a postseason berth, but they also put together the best effort of the season and one of the best of all time without their head coach on the bench and without anyone from his coaching staff on the bench. That’s embarrassing at best for Quinn, and at worst, has to make the front office question everything. That’s how different the Rangers looked.

6. Now the Rangers head to Washington D.C. for games on back-to-back days against the division-leading Capitals, who the Rangers are somehow 2-0 against this season and have outscored 8-3 in those two games. The Capitals are tied for the league lead in points, and the Rangers have easily handled them in both games this season. It’s those types of efforts that make the Rangers’ .500 first half even more frustrating and harder to accept. They have shown they can play with and beat the best teams in the league, but they have also shown they are incapable of holding third-period leads, completely overcoming deficits and winning games in which they dominate possession and win in expected goals.

7. Even though the Rangers have picked up five of a possible six points in their last three games against the Bruins and Flyers, I still don’t think they will make the postseason. That pains me to say, but the math isn’t in their favor at the halfway point of the season. A .500 record wasn’t going to cut it for a half-season in a shortened, 56-game season, and that’s what the Rangers provided in the first 28 games, going 12-12-4. The 1.20 points per game threshold I have written about since before the season began wasn’t picked out of thin air. It was a historical measuring stick from seasons past with a little cushion built in. The Rangers averaged 1.00 point per game in the first half of the season and are three wins off pace. Three wins in three games they can’t get back on the schedule. There are four teams averaging at least 1.20 points per game in the East. They are the four teams currently holding the four playoff spots.

8. The Rangers could have easily won three more games. They have lost seven games in which they had a lead, including four in which they held a third-period lead. Against Pittsburgh alone, they have had leads in five of the six games between the two and have lost five of six. The difference between being holding a playoff spot right now and being the three points out of one that they are is their head-to-head series against the Penguins. The Rangers are currently six points out from the Bruins, who have a game in hand on the Rangers. They are nine points in back of the Penguins (those five blown leads loom large) and 14 points behind both the Islanders and Capitals. Let’s focus on the fourth spot, and the Bruins with 34 points because that’s the Rangers’ best path to a postseason berth.

9. The Bruins are averaging 1.26 points per game. If they play to that pace over their remaining 29 games, the will finish with 71 points. The Rangers would need to get 43 points in their remaining 28 games, a 1.54 points-per-game pace to reach 71 points. That’s a 21-6-1 or 20-5-3 or 19-4-5 record. That’s not happening. The Bruins have an odd number of games left (29), so let’s say they played one-game-over-.500 the rest of the way and finished with 64 points. The Rangers would have to play to a 1.29 points-per-game pace to earn 36 points in 28 games. That’s an 18-10-0 or 17-9-2 or 16-8-4 record. It’s much more reasonable, but unless the Bruins’ recent slide is going to continue, it’s not likely. On top of the Rangers playing exceptionally well for the next nearly two months, there’s still the issue of the Flyers sandwiched between them and the 4-seed.

10. It’s going to be hard, very, very hard for the Rangers to overcome their mediocre and mostly disappointing first half to reach the postseason. Not impossible, but unlikely. I’m not ready to give up on them yet, and I’m not ready for the season to completely turn into watching the development of the young core. I’m close, but I’m not there yet. A few more blown third-period leads, and I won’t have to give up on the Rangers. They will have done it for me.

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Jack Eichel played against his potential future team in his potential future home on Tuesday night against the Rangers at the Garden. Everything points to Eichel becoming a Ranger sometime in the next five months, and all of today’s thoughts are on a potential Eichel trade.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers (kind of).

1. When the Rangers traded for Rick Nash nine years ago this July, they gave up Brandon Dubinsky, Artem Anisimov, Tim Erixon and a first-round pick. It should hurt a team to acquire a talent like Nash, a 40-goal scorer and Team Canada first-liner, and it didn’t hurt at all. All three of those players were expendable. The only thing that hurt was losing the 2013 first-round pick, but the Blue Jackets used that pick on Kerby Rychel and he has played 43 career NHL games (with his last coming during the 2018-19 season). The Rangers used the the third-round pick they received from Columbus in the deal on Pavel Buchnevich.

2. Like Nash, it should hurt for the Rangers to trade for Jack Eichel, but I don’t think it will. It will hurt a little more than it did to acquire Nash because of Eichel’s age and position, but nearly not to the level it should. Eichel “reportedly” being unhappy in Buffalo and this being public knowledge assures the Rangers won’t pay full value for the 24-year-old center. The Sabres will be negotiating from a point of weakness, just like the Blue Jackets were nearly nine years ago.

3. Nash spent nine seasons in Columbus and played in one postseason a four-game sweep. He had been a two-time 40-goal scorer for the Blue Jackets and had scored at least 30 goals in seven of his nine seasons with them. This is Eichel’s sixth season in Buffalo. He has never played in a postseason game, and also has never scored 40 goals, scoring more than 28 just once (36 last season), but he plays the more demanding and coveted position and is four years younger than Nash was when the Rangers traded for him.

4. Sure, the Sabres could keep Eichel if they don’t approve of an offer for him, but that seems like the least likely result of how this plays out. The most likely result is Eichel being traded in the upcoming offseason, followed by Eichel being traded during this season, and lastly, Eichel remaining with the Sabres for 2021-22. Keeping Eichel would cause the Sabres to run the the risk of him getting injured, less happy playing in Buffalo or possibly being less productive. He would also be a year older. The Sabres’ return for Eichel will only lessen the longer he’s a Sabre past this summer.

5. As a Rangers fan, of course I want the Rangers to land someone like Eichel. He is one of the game’s best pure goal scorers (just don’t look at his numbers this season), a true No. 1 center and only 24 years old. He checks every box the Rangers need (and every team needs for that matter). The Rangers are going to exit their rebuild/transition status for the 2021-22 season, and adding Eichel to a team whose young core features Alexis Lafreniere (19), Kappo Kakko (20), Filip Chytil (21), Adam Fox (23) and K’Andre Miller (21) makes all the sense in the world. Even Artemi Panarin (29), Mika Zibanejad (27), Chris Kreider (29) and Jacob Trouba (27) are all currently still in their 20s. The problem is, to get Eichel, not all of those names would be on the 2021-22 Rangers.

6. To me, Lafreniere, Kakko, Chytil, Fox and Miller are untouchables, and the Rangers don’t need to include them given Buffalo’s position in an inevitable trade. Panarin isn’t going anywhere, and neither are Kreider or Trouba. That leaves Zibanejad and Chytil from those names.

7. Right now, Zibanejad and Chytil are the Rangers’ two best centers, even if Zibanejad has looked lost this season, and Chytil has barely played. (It’s remarkable the Rangers are only six points out of a playoff spot given the lack of production from these two.) Zibanejad’s name has been the most consistent in proposed returns for the Sabres in an Eichel trade because he will be a free agent at the end of next season, his salary will help offset Eichel’s $10 million per and the Rangers seemingly can’t keep Zibanejad and pay Eichel and pay Panarin and Trouba what they owe them and have enough room for eventual deals for the five untouchables.

8. The problem is, at best, the Rangers have two great centers in Zibanejad in Chytil, when Chytil is playing at his peak level. (Sorry, Ryan Strome and Brett Howden). Removing either one for Eichel puts the Rangers in the same position they are currently in. Unless the one they’re removing is Chytil. But by trading Chytil, the Rangers run the risk of losing Zibanejad after next season and then they would only have Eichel as a capable top-six center. The Rangers’ window with both Eichel and Zibanejad would be one season. One season to outlast 31 other teams isn’t promising.

9. At this point, I would be surprised if Eichel isn’t eventually a Ranger. All signs point to him being traded, and the Rangers have the cap space and the assets to complete a trade. It makes the most sense for the Rangers to trade for Eichel in the offseason rather than during the season, when it will undoubtedly cost them less, especially in a season in which it’s a stretch to see them reaching the postseason given their inconsistent play and the division they play in.

10. When the Rangers sent out the letter three years ago before they began to dismantle the core of their team over the next three calendar years by trading Nash, Ryan McDonagh, J.T. Miller, Mats Zuccarello, Kevin Hayes, Brady Skjei and Marc Staal and by buying out Henrik Lundqvist, I didn’t see them being here in a such a relatively short amount of time. Here being trading for Trouba, signing Panarin, miraculously landing the No. 2 pick in Kakko and even more miraculously landing the No. 1 pick in Lafreniere, hitting on two potential Top 2 defensemen in Fox and Miller and having the first heir to Lundqvist look like the next Lundqvist in Igor Shesterkin. Now, it seems like they will inevitably trade for Eichel at a discounted rate between now and the first game of 2021-22.

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The Rangers lost yet another game they could have won on Wednesday night in Philadelphia, losing 4-3 to the Flyers. The Rangers did earn four of a possible six points in the three games in Philadelphia and Washington, so it was a successful road trip.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. It was always going to be hard for the Rangers to earn a postseason berth in the deepest division in the league with the youngest roster in the league, even if they were stay completely healthy all season. They haven’t stayed healthy, and the injuries, coupled with protocol problems and Artemi Panarin’s situation have left them with a roster that’s not going to be nearly good enough on most night. With their current roster for an extended period of time, I don’t know how they reach the playoffs.

2. Panarin won’t be with the team for what seems like indefinitely. Filip Chytil just started skating following an injury and being in protocol, Kaapko Kakko is in protocol and now K’Andre Miller is too. Jacob Trobua is out for four to six weeks with a broken thumb. The Rangers are down three top-six forwards and one-third of their expected defense. Losses shouldn’t be hard to come by with this roster.

3. That’s not to say the Rangers couldn’t have won in Philadelphia on Wednesday for their third straight win. They could have. They won in expected goals like they have more often than not this season, the problem is expected goals mean absolutely nothing. The Flyers scored four goals and Chris Kreider scored all three Rangers goals. That’s all that matters.

4. I have been hard on Kreider this season. (Actually, I have been hard on him since before he was a Ranger when the Rangers should have included him to acquire Rick Nash at the 2011-12 deadline.) But he had a hat trick on Wednesday, accouting for the Rangers’ entire offense, and now leads the Rangers with eight goals on the season. (He might want to add in a few assists along the way to bolster that 8-1-9 line.) Kreider has been part of the problem and not part of the solution in the majority of the games this season, though he hasn’t been the reason for the Rangers’ offensive shortcomings of late.

5. The amount of breakaways and odd-man rushes the Flyers had on Wednesday was astounding. The third period felt like one long power play for the Flyers as they kept crossing the Rangers’ blue line with numbers. Igor Shesterkin finally stopped a breakaway (many breakaways) and kept the Rangers in the game, and it ended up being the latest case of Blue(shirts) Balls where you think the Rangers are going to complete a comeback to at least force overtime, and they don’t.

6. Shesterkin was outstanding on odd-man rushes, so it’s hard to get on him for the goal Kevin Hayes scored, but that just can’t happen. You have to let it slide since the breakaways more than cancel out Hayes’ bad-angle shot over Shesterkin’s shoulder from the goal line, it’s just hard to stomach that goal being the eventual game-winner.

7. I was happy when the Rangers didn’t extend Hayes, happy when they moved him and happy when they didn’t re-sign him. He’s been a much better player in Philadelphia than he was in New York, however, that doesn’t change my mind on the Rangers deciding to not make him part of their future a couple of years ago.

8. I don’t know how Alexis Lafrenière only got 3:50 of ice time in the first period against the Flyers. That would be an abysmal number if the Rangers were at full strength. When you factor in that Panarin, Kakko and Chytil are all out, it would seem impossible. Lafrenière finished the game 14:56 of ice time, but that’s still 1:55 less than Colin Blackwell and 2:39 less than Kevin Rooney. Throw out positions and special teams, that just can’t happen. Otherwise, what’s the point of anything if the No. 1 overall pick isn’t allowed to impact that game more than Blackwell and Rooney, and Ryan Strome and Pavel Buchnevich for that matter.

9. I guess I will just never understand David Quinn. Well, I shouldn’t say that. Either he will change his ways and I will understand him, or he will replaced as Rangers head coach. As of now though, it looks like I will never understand him since he seems set in his inexplicable ways, and there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it. Not even the absence of Panarin, Kakko and Chytil is enough for him to change.

10. After going 4-7-3 in the first quarter of the season, the Rangers made it so they had to win two out of every three games for the remaining 42. They have done so to begin the second quarter as they 2-1-0 after the three games in Philadelphia and Washington. Now it’s three straight at home against Boston (twice) and Buffalo before a six-game road trip to New Jersey (2), Pittsburgh (2) and Boston (2). After these next nine games, the season will be 46 percent and we’ll have a good idea of what this Rangers season is or will be.

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