Drew a Penalty

Yikes. That was brutal. Hopefully they’ll have a better effort next week when the games actually count. That wasn’t encouraging from anyone on the Rangers, though. Really disappointed that Othmann once again showed nothing. It doesn’t help that the team around him sucked, but this was a last chance to make a statement. That was a mumble. Do the work in Hartford, kid.

Rempe has two of the best drives to the net this game for the Rangers. Really positive to see him finding a way to make himself useful offensively. That’s also terrible for the Rangers because they’ve shown absolutely nothing all game.

Berard was also a left wing prior to arriving in Hartford but it seems like he’s been more comfortable with the switch.

Because Othmann isn’t good at RW like I just said and he’s currently only playing placeholder for Panarin while Lafreniere is now exclusively playing RW.

One thing that might benefit Othmann tonight is being back on the left side. He's spent much of preseason at right wing and that's not a side he's quite figured out yet. Othmann's game dipped last season when they flipped his wing with Berard sometime around the halfway point in the season. They ended up swapping back for the end of the season with Othmann returning to left and Berard to right, and both performed better.

Just two assists but he's looked more engaged and dynamic than Othmann. He provides good pressure, takes meaningful shots, and is a zone entry machine. There's a lot to like about Berard.

Robertson played not even 10 minutes in one preseason game before getting injured. He’s been patiently waiting for his turn in Hartford over the last few years so they’re giving him one last chance instead of just cutting him outright. We’ve seen a lot of Mancini so we already know he’s the best remaining defenseman.

Kreider-Zibanejad-Smith Othmann-Trocheck-Lafreniere Cuylle-Chytil-Kakko Edstrom-Carrick-Rempe Miller-Fox Jones-Trouba Robertson-Schneider Shesterkin Is the expected lineup.

Troub Lies Pos Player C C. McDavid EDM - C C J. Eriksson-Ek MIN - C LW F. Forsberg NSH - LW LW C. Caufield MTL - LW/RW RW M. Boldy MIN - LW/RW RW J. Peterka BUF - RW D M. Heiskanen DAL - D D N. Dobson NYI - D D D. Toews COL - D D J. Sanderson OTT - D Util N. Kadri CGY - C G J. Oettinger DAL - G G C. Ingram UTA - G BN A. Stolarz TOR - G BN V. Arvidsson EDM - LW BN J. Trouba NYR - D

He missed most of preseason after getting injured in the first game. They’re giving him the courtesy of one final look before they have to waive him.

Othmann needs to move his feet and be more assertive with his passes. He was throwing a lot of pucks into space, and you can't be making area passes or soft dumps in some of his situations. He has the right intention but the execution is off. He also hasn't used his shot much and has flubbed some opportunities he did have. He's not ready and that was expected, by me at least. Hopefully, he's not disgruntled when he goes down to Hartford and uses the opportunity to light the AHL on fire.

The competition at forward is down to Othmann, Edstrom, Berard, Groulx, Brodzinski, and Carrick. Defense is down to just Mancini and Mackey. Korczak and Robertson are both still up but only because of injury. Edit: Robertson is evidently healthy so maybe they're giving him a final crack but I wouldn't expect anything.

They did it with Bonino and Pitlick last season. Carrick has been an AHL captain, he knows what his situation could be.

Because he's incredibly cheap depth that can still be effective at the AHL level. His contract has been below the NHL minimum for the last two seasons.

The new PPs are what I’m most interested in seeing tonight. They already seem to have split the groups up pretty well.