The Rangers returned from their long layoff and won three of four. It’s what they need to do keep their playoff dreams alive and prolong a third straight deadline selloff from the front office. The Rangers still have nine games left before the deadline to showcase their available players while at the same time try to prove they can make a miraculous run to the playoffs.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers as usual.

1. The only person who was happier for Henrik Lundqivst than Lundqvist following his 1-0 shutout on Saturday in Detroit was me. More than two years since his last shutout, a feat that used to be accomplished weekly it felt like, Lundqvist once again posted a zero. The Rangers’ defense was never anything special when it featured Ryan McDonagh, Marc Staal, Dan Girardi, Anton Stralman, Dan Boyle, Keith Yandle or Kevin Klein as Lundqvist routinely made that group and many others appear much better than they actually were from a scoreboard standpoint. But I’m sure Lundqvist longs for the days when he had some of those names given the current state of the Rangers’ defense and what he, Igor Shesterkin and Alexandar Georgiev, need to do each game to prevent lopsided results.

2. To see Lundqvist get pulled against Dallas in the game immediately following his shutout was disheartening and rather unfair, but the reason for the goals didn’t matter to many Rangers fans, just that there were goals. The franchise legend was turned on as the reason and not the unnecessary penalties, slot deflections, odd-man rushes and defensive-zone turnovers, which set up the goals. The loss was hardly Number 30’s fault.

3. The three-goalie situation has now been going on for a month. Here’s how it’s gone since Shesterkin’s debut:

Shesterkin
Shesterkin
Lundqvist
Georgiev
Georgiev
Shesterkin
Georgiev
Shesterkin
Lundqvist
Lundqvist
Shesterkin

Sometimes the next game’s starting goalie has been based on the previous game’s performance, sometimes it has been based on being already scheduled and sometimes it’s been based on past performance against the next game’s opponent. It’s been hard to predict who will start from game to game, but I’m going to make a prediction for the games between now and next week’s Thoughts.

Friday vs. Buffalo: Georgiev
Sunday vs. Los Angeles: Shesterkin
Tuesday at Winnipeg: Lundqvist

4. Toronto was seen as the favorite to land Georgiev in a pre-deadline deal and then Los Angeles had to step in and trade them Jack Campbell. After ruining Lundqvist’s chance at the elusive Cup, it might be the Kings who once again ruin his legacy. With Toronto no longer in need of a goalie, the odds on Georgiev getting traded this season take a hit and it makes it more likely Lundqvist is somehow talked into waiving his no-trade clause or is bought out in the offseason. I hate the Kings.

5. Georgiev getting moved is still the most likeliest outcome of the three-goalie issue, but with each passing day and especially with Toronto no longer a suitor, it’s not as likely as it was just a few days ago. The cold, rainy winter days coupled with all of these Lundqvist trade and buyout rumors are depressing. I understand the Rangers’ love for Georgiev and their reluctance to trade him for anything less than their seemingly over-the-top demands, but it’s still the right move. I also understand Lundqvist’s age and his salary and cap hit for 2020-21. I also recognize what he has done for the organization for nearly 15 years and I will never not feel indebted to him as a Rangers fan. An offseason buyout would be even worse.

6. On the topic of buyouts, how many buyouts are the Rangers doing to need to do? They bought out Brad Richards and Dan Girardi and Kevin Shattenkirk, and should have bought out Staal. (Maybe start rethinking the organization’s handling of contracts and when extensions should be made?) If the Rangers do decide to extend Chris Kreider, there’s a good chance I will be writing about the Rangers needing to buy him out in a few years as well. I get that Kreider makes the Rangers better right now and next season as well and the season after that, but they’re not even a playoff team this season and next season they won’t be close to contending and might still not be ready in 2021-22. Realistically, the Rangers are three years at best from possibly being one of the elite teams in the league and by then Kreider will be 31-32 and getting paid to do things he did on the other side of 30. Given the weak expected rental class for this deadline, let some team overpay for his services for two months and use the return to actually help the team win in three and four years from now.

7. Given Artemi Panarin’s recent drop in even-strength production, I gladly welcomed Ryan Strome being removed from his line. It didn’t last long though as David Quinn put the two back together during Wednesday’s win over Toronto. One day I will get my dream of a Panarin-Mika Zibanejad-Kaapo Kakko line. One day.

8. I was a fan of the trade for Jacob Trouba and still am, but I completely understand why he is a potential trade asset. He’s signed long-term at a solid number and he’s now a luxury for the Rangers. Given the abundnace of young defense and the eventual need to pay that young defense, Trouba isn’t needed the way he was when they traded for him. I will still happily have him as a Ranger, but I now almost expect him to be traded before his no-trade kicks in this offseason. When it comes to trading young defensemen with long-term deals, how about Brady Skjei? There has to be a landing spot for Skjei is his $5.25M cap hit through 2023-24. After Georgiev (because it helps Lundqvist remain a Ranger) and Kreider (because extending would be a mistake for when the team is ready to contend), I most want Skjei to be traded.

9. The best day of the season will be the day the day Greg McKegg, Brendan Smith and Micheal Haley no longer play. We’re getting closer to that day. With the deadline approaching and the Rangers’ playoff odds on the brink, it’s only a matter of time until the Rangers start to implement more young players into the NHL lineup and stop wasting valuable regular-season minutes and icetime on three players who should have never been a part of this season’s roster.

10. The Rangers came out of their 10-day layoff needing to win 75 percent of their remaining 34 games, and they have done that so far, going 3-1 against Detroit, Dallas and Toronto. They are now on pace for 88 points, and the second wild card is on pace for 99 points. That’s a lot of points to make up and every projection I have seen gives the Rangers a single-digit percentage of reaching the playoffs. The Rangers are going to need a 21-6-3 finish to play an 83rd game.

It feels like it’s been months since the Rangers last played a game and they’re still another day away from returning to action. I’m sure the players have enjoyed the 10-day layoff, but with baseball in its lull period before spring training and only one football game left, it’s been a grind since the last Rangers game though I’m sure a lot of the feeling has to do with the back-to-back losses before the break.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers as usual.

1. The Rangers have one last chance to make a run before the front office begins its third straight selloff. The Rangers have 13 games before the trade deadline, and I feel like it would take at least 12 wins for them to hold on to their assets. With 12 wins before the deadline, the Rangers would then be on pace for 100 points and it would put them in contention for a playoff berth. However, Carolina currently holds the second wild card, and their current point pace is still better than the Rangers’ would be if they won 12 of 13 over the next three-plus weeks.

Even if the Rangers won 12 of 13 (or won all 13), their post-deadline schedule includes the Islanders, Philadelphia (three times), St. Louis, Washington (twice), Dallas, Colorado, Calgary, Pittsburgh (three times), Columbus, Washington, Tampa Bay and Florida. In this magical, fairytale world where this Rangers team could win 12 of 13 or set the franchise record with 13 straight wins, it still most likely wouldn’t be enough to reach the postseason.

There’s no scenario over the next 25 days in which the Rangers shouldn’t stick with their rebuild plan. The plan was never to go all out for the postseason in 2019-20. It was to be ready for a possible playoff berth in 2020-21, but most likely in 2021-22, and contend for the Cup in maybe 2021-22, but more like 2022-23 and 2023-24. The team’s play for most of this season was unexpected and enjoyable, but it was never enough to be one of the Top 8 in the East and to make any sort of extended run in the spring.

2. It seems like Alexandar Georgiev, who will be a restricted free agent this summer, is as good as gone. Whether it’s before the deadline or before the beginning of next season, Georgiev won’t be a Ranger. It will be before the deadline if teams like Toronto and Colorado realize their goaltending will be what keeps them from a postseason run and if they are willing to meet the Rangers’ ask of an NHL-ready forward. In an ideal world, the Rangers would be able to keep Georgiev and pair him with Igor Shesterkin for years to come, while also giving Henrik Lundqvist the kind of end to his career he deserves as a Rangers legend and all-time great. But Lundqvist’s no-trade clause, which he more than earned for carrying the franchise for 15 years, isn’t going to get waived, and it shouldn’t.

4. If Lundqvist wants to remain a Ranger through the end of next season and the end of his contract before walking away, good for him. I could also envision a scenario where Lundqvist returns at a much more team-friendly rate beginning in 2021-22 to serve as the backup when this team is ready or close to ready to contend. You can do a lot worse than having Lundqvist as a veteran presence in the room, a mentor to his heir and the backup of your team. Would Lundqvist, a career starter and millionaire, want to sit on the bench and travel around North America and be away from his family at 40 to only play 20-or-so games a season? I don’t know. But I want him to because when this team is Cup-contending good again, I want him to be a part of it.

5. Aside from Georgiev, the Rangers’ restricted free agents include Ryan Strome, Brendan Lemieux and Tony DeAngelo, and I have to think all three are in play. My order of preference to keep would be DeAngelo then Lemieux then Strome. There is no way Strome’s stock will ever be higher than it is now, and it has everything to do with playing with Artemi Panarin. Panarin is on pace for 117 points with Strome and Jesper Fast as his linemates, and the Bread Man has a chance at Jaromir Jagr’s 123-point record despite playing with these two. There is this weird faction of Rangers fans who are very pro-Strome though I’m not sure how they can watch him every game and not see how all of his success is directly tied to Panarin. Trade him. As for Fast, he’s an unrestricted free agent, but he won’t cost much. He’s only getting $1.85 million now, and whatever number he were to sign for after this season certainly isn’t going to significantly hinder the team’s cap situation in the future. But unless the Rangers plan on extending him if they don’t trade him, losing him for nothing in the offseason as a free agent would go against the team’s goal of acquiring as many future or draft assets as possible.

6. DeAngelo is an interesting trade candidate because he’s a restricted free agent who will command a substantial raise and because he’s only 24 and on pace for a 63-point season. Defensemen who can score like DeAngelo does aren’t exactly easy to find, and they are rarely ever available at a deadline when they’re 24 years old. But with the Rangers’ abundance of young defensemen, a player like DeAngelo could be expendable, if the Rangers believe they will hit on most of those young defensemen and if they believe they can get the kind of haul DeAngelo could return. The Rangers also might have to believe this season is the ceiling for DeAngelo and that his scoring is a product of the Rangers’ offensive-minded style of play which will surely need to change in order to truly contend. It’s hard to envision a team which allows the most shots per game winning the Cup.

7. It would be a lot easier to keep DeAngelo if the Rangers could move Brady Skjei, who is one year older than DeAngelo and who is owed $5.25 million through 2023-24. Or maybe there is a plan to move Jacob Trouba, as the 25-year-old is owed $8 million through 2025-26. If it were my call, I would move Skjei though I could see why the Rangers might feel they no longer need Trouba, especially at $8 million per year, the same way they thought they did last summer when they traded for and extended him. Trouba’s deal wasn’t unreasonable coming off a career-best, 50-point season, and over time his number won’t seem like as much as the cap goes up, but there is certainly a case to be made to move him. After next season, the Rangers will have Marc Staal’s $5.7 million coming off the books as well as Brendan Smith’s $4.35 million (unless some team wants to take either of them off the Rangers hands before Feb. 24 … any takers?!). But they will also be looking at paying raises to restricted free agents Pavel Buchnevich, Filip Chytil, Brett Howden and Ryan Lindgren.

8. I can’t believe it’s already been eight years since I wanted the Rangers to trade Chris Kreider in order to land Rick Nash before the 2011-12 deadline. The Rangers had a chance to trade a college kid with no professional hockey experience for a Team Canada first-liner for a potential Cup run. The Rangers chose not to make the move and ended up losing in the Eastern Conference finals to New Jersey, losing Games 4, 5 and 6 of the series while scoring only six goals combined in those three games. It’s possible landing Nash could have been the difference in that series and maybe the Rangers beat Los Angeles for the Cup rather than playing and losing to an even better Los Angeles team two years later. Even though the Rangers were able to land Nash that summer without having to include Kreider, I would still make that pre-2012 deadline trade today.

9. When it comes to Kreider now, the only option is to trade him. I keep seeing and hearing about the idea of extending him, but there’s no way Kreider risked injury in his impending free-agent season to lower his contract demands and take a hometown discount. Kreider will be 29 for next season and this is his one chance to cash in. It’s unfortunate his career timeline doesn’t match up with the timeline of this rebuild and he won’t have a chance to compete for another Cup as a Ranger (if only some of his Cup Final breakaways had found the back of the net), but that’s been the case for nearly the entire previous core of Rangers over the last three seasons. The Rangers can’t afford to be overpaying for Kreider on the wrong side of 30 when they will be in need of cap space to pay their new, young core. Sure, Kreider would provide veteran leadership in what’s currently the youngest locker room in the league, but the Rangers won’t be in any position to pay for an intangible in a few years.

10. There are so many ways the next three-plus weeks could play out for the Rangers that it feels like a choose-your-own adventure book as each decision has signficant, franchise-changing ramifications. The Rangers could move only Kreider. They could move no one. They could move everyone mentioned here. They could move players not mentioned here. Whatever they do, it looks like this is it: the last selloff. Two years after sending the letter to fans to publicize their plans to tear the team down and what will be three selloffs later, the Rangers will be on to the next phase of this rebuild.

After winning four out of five and putting the idea of playoff hockey into their fans’ heads, the Rangers lost back-to-back games at home to limp into their 10-day layoff. The losses have put their playoff aspirations in peril and with a little more than two months of hockey left, the Rangers are close to playing for next season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers as usual.

1. The moment Artemi Panarin was scratched from Tuesday night’s game with an upper-body injury was the moment the Rangers lost the game. The Panarin-less Rangers did their best to win a third straight Battle of New York, but without the team’s leading scorer and best player, it was too little too late for the Rangers in their failed comeback attempt late in the game.

As the Rangers were failing to pick up a single point out of the four on the line in their back-to-back home games to close out the pre-All-Star portion of their schedule, the Hurricanes put together two straight wins and the Blue Jackets six straight to push the Rangers down even more in the standings. The Rangers enter their layoff 13 points back for a division spot, 12 points back of the first wild card and 11 points back of the second wild card. Carolina has the second wild card pacing for 100 points and for the Rangers to get to 100 points, they will need 50 points in 34 games, or a 23-7-4 record and will somehow have to find a way to jump Montreal, Buffalo, Toronto, Philadelphia and Columbus.

2. The Rangers-Islanders three games in eight days did provide some midseason, pre-layoff excitement, but in the future I would prefer a late-October game, a right-before-Christmas game and then two games in March in the final month of the season.

The NHL created its current playoff format to manufacture rivalries and postseason drama, but so far in the Eastern Conference, the only two teams to meet consistently are the Bruins and Maple Leafs (and they might meet again this season). It’s too bad we have yet to get even one Rangers-Islanders playoff series from this format and we won’t get it again this season. Maybe 2020-21 will finally be the year we get the Battle of New York in the postseason.

3. I’m still not over the loss to Columbus because of how crucial getting that one point was and how season-changing getting two could have been. But maybe it was for the better. The last thing this Rangers team needs in the middle of what looks to be a successful and expedited rebuild is to be fooled into thinking they are better than they are like they were when they held on to the core for the 2016-17 season. The best thing to happen to the Yankees since their dynasty was losing four straight games heading into the 2016 trade deadline to take themselves out of the wild-card race, and losing to the Blue Jackets and Islanders might have been the best thing for this Rangers team to prove to the front office “going for it” this season isn’t worth it. This team needs one more pre-deadline selloff.

4. Chris Kreider is the key to this last pre-deadline selloff. To me, it doesn’t matter if Kreider lowers his number or the Rangers find a way to fit his demands into their cap, he should be traded. Kreider is going to turn 29 shortly after this season ends and given the current state and age of the young core of the Rangers and when they will be ready to seriously contend for a championship, the timeline doesn’t match up with Kreider’s future. I understand the Rangers would be parting ways with yet another fan favorite who provides veteran leadership, but it’s not worth the contract it will cost to sign or the possibility of getting nothing in return to hold on to him for the rest of the season.

5. Kreider is a good player, but him being named to the All-Star team in place of the injured Panarin isn’t a great look for a game which is supposed to feature the best players in the league. Kreider is on pace for a 29-goal, 55-point season and is currently tied for 102nd in league scoring. Mika Zibanejad would have been a much better option, and I get that he missed 13 games earlier this season, but at least he’s on a 42-goal pace for an 82-game season and is a more-than-a-point-per-game player.

6. Aside from trading Kreider, the Rangers still need to figure out what to do with their goalie situation. Alexandar Georgiev is still going to be the odd man out, but when? Right now, I feel like the Rangers are going to keep Georgiev through the end of the season and trade him this summer. It’s going to take desperation from a team like Toronto or Colorado and the the realization their season will likely end in the spring because of their goaltending. It doesn’t seem like the Rangers are going to budge on their demand of an NHL-ready forward in return for Georgiev, and they shouldn’t. They’re really in no need to rush to move Georgiev even if the three-goalie rotation is ridiculous.

7. Igor Shesterkin was sent down to the AHL for the layoff, taking a substantial paycut during this time in what is the latest repercussion of this three-goalie situation. In the last eight games, Georgiev has received four starts, Shesterkin three and Henrik Lundqvist one.

Lundqvist had five days off before playing on Jan. 2. Then he had nine days off before playing on Jan. 11. He hasn’t played since. The earliest Lundqvist will play is the first game back after the layoff and that would mean he’s had 20 days off between starts. The situation hasn’t been ideal for any of the three goalies, but especially for Lundqvist who is used to playing the majority of the games in a season and has historically played better when he goes extended periods without backing up. Lundqvist might end up with two starts in the entire month of January.

8. This isn’t necessarily related to the Rangers since they have only been in two shootouts this season and haven’t been in one in a while, but it’s time to get rid of the shootout. It was fun and different and exciting when it was implemented nearly 15 years ago, but it’s time to move on. It’s absurd games and seasons are still be determined by a shootout. Either turn off the clock for overtime and play 3-on-3 until there’s a goal, or if you need a time of goal for record purposes, put 20 minutes on the clock and play 3-on-3 until a goal is scored. The league has changed the overtime format multiple times over the years, and they need to change it again.

9. I think the Rangers will compete for the playoffs next season. I don’t mean compete the way they are now where they are “still in it” but not really in it at all. I mean seriously compete. The only issue is they are part of the Met and the division isn’t going anywhere in terms of talent and depth. The Rangers will have to continue to grind out every single point in division play for the foreseeable future, but it will be the non-division games where they need to improve and take care of their own business next season and beyond. They have lost so many points to the inferior Western Conference this season, winning seven of 18 games, and have given away points to the worst teams in the league.

10. I realize the Rangers aren’t going to immediately change course and start giving NHL ice time and experience to those with an actual future with the team. They are going to try to put together the long-awaited extended win streak after the break with back-to-back games against Detroit to quickly get back on track and try one last time for a lengthy winning streak before the deadline. With five out of their first six games at home following the layoff, they could put a dent into their needed points total. The problem is the regulation loss total of eight they can afford to give up the rest of the way. I’m not sure how they navigate the remaining 34 games without exceeding that number with more than double that amount of games against playoff teams. It was a good run, but with a six percent chance of reaching the playoffs, it’s time to play for the future.T