Mike Sullivan followed the power-play advice of his former Boston University hockey coach Jack Parker — “Start with what you deem the five best players and then go from there,” Sullivan recalled — to open the season. He kept J.T. Miller, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Dorofeyev and Alexis Lafrenière together, for the most part, and remained patient.
But with the Rangers entering play Monday ranked 18th (20.0 percent) with the man advantage this season, they made changes, demoting Miller, bringing Gabe Perreault to the first group and having Tye Kartye take the place of Eeli Tolvanen with the second unit. Sullivan said the coaching staff included the initial five players on the top power-play line in the discussions, adding that the players “want to take ownership for that.”
“I just think at this particular point in time, I could feel or sense an element of frustration just because the guys care deeply,” Sullivan said. “And so sometimes a little bit of change can bring a reset. Is this the long-term solution? I’m not sure. I don’t know the answer to that yet, but we’re gonna — we made this decision to split the groups.”
The most notable tweak involved Miller, the captain who has been a mainstay with the top group since Sullivan took over. Miller has collected one goal and one assist with the man advantage this year and has generated six individual high-danger scoring chances, according to Natural Stat Trick, but his individual expected goals number (0.97) was the lowest among forwards on the Rangers’ initial top power-play line.
“We’ve been way below our standard, I think, so far,” Miller said. “I even think when we were scoring goals earlier on, we were opportunistic. … At some point, you gotta do a little shake-up. … Typically when we do that, we get some juice, and try to go from there.”
The power play, historically, has been a strength for the Blueshirts. Even last year, a campaign in which they finished last in the Eastern Conference, the Rangers finished with the fifth-best percentage (24.7) in the league.
But after power-play goals in five of seven games to open the year, they’ll enter Tuesday’s match against the Blues with just three across their last 21 opportunities (14.3 percent) since Oct. 13.
“I think J.T. understands it,” Sullivan said. “He gets it. And I think he’s excited about the possibilities of the units that are together right now. You could feel it in the energy on the ice today. And so I think J.T., he’s been great about it.”
The Rangers’ Hometown Remix jerseys were unveiled Monday as part of a leaguewide announcement, with the Blueshirts’ containing “New York” in stair-step style across the chest, a captain’s patch paying tribute to first responders and a Lady Liberty patch capturing the design from their old alternate jersey.
They’ll wear the jerseys for five games during the season: Nov. 4 against the Flyers, Nov. 30 against the Hurricanes, Dec. 22 against the Devils, Feb. 12 against the Islanders and March 21 against the Capitals.
Defenseman Sean Durzi (undisclosed) didn’t practice Monday and remained day to day. Sullivan didn’t have any update on whether he’d be available for Tuesday’s game. … Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo participated in practice again, though Sullivan said he didn’t know if he’d be an option for a game later in the week.
The Rangers recalled Jaroslav Chmelar from AHL Hartford and assigned Taylor Raddysh to the Wolf Pack.
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