Management made a conscious offseason effort to add depth and reduce the burden on top Rangers players.
President and general manager Chris Drury targeted not only skaters adept on special teams, but also emphasized adding versatile players who could play on both wings and both sides on defense, and move up and down the lineup.
Now the actual deployment is in the hands of head coach Mike Sullivan.
And through the first three games of the 2026-27 season, there is evidence of the organization’s intentions.
“My hope is we can take some of those [penalty-killing] minutes away from J.T. [Miller] and Mika [Zibanejad],” Sullivan said during training camp. “I think if we do, we’ll have the ability to get a better version of them, just because of managing workloads. I think we leaned on those guys a lot. And my experience has been, if you put your top guys in — if they’re first over the boards in every situation — power play, penalty kill, top six — it adds up to north of 20 minutes every single night. That’s just my experience. J.T. and Mika are excellent penalty killers, it’s not to say they won’t be a part of it. They certainly are.
“But we’d like to lessen their load there a little bit there. With some of the guys I think we have in the bottom six now, we should be able to do that.”
The Rangers have been shorthanded an NHL-leading 10 times so far this season. To put it in perspective, the Panthers, with Brady and Matthew Tkachuk, are the only other team that has also been shorthanded that many times entering Saturday’s slate of NHL games.
Miller, whose average ice time of 16:24 ranks third among Rangers forwards, has logged just 32 seconds on the penalty kill. As for Adam Fox, the Rangers No. 1 defenseman has seen only 49 seconds of shorthanded time.
It’s obvious that Sullivan is especially wary of how Fox is being utilized after the 28-year-old defenseman suffered two long-term injuries last season. The mileage on Fox has been a concern in the past, but it appears the Rangers are actively limiting his usage.
For the past six seasons, Fox has averaged at least 23 minutes of ice time per game. Twice he’s finished with an average of over 24 minutes.
Friday’s 2-0 win in Detroit marked the first time Fox led the Rangers in ice time (22:50) and the first time he cracked 20 minutes since the season began.
As much as it’s about the ice time, Sullivan is also looking to make different personnel decisions situationally.
“Last year we leaned on J.T. and Mika a lot in those [defensive] situations,” the veteran coach said. “[Noah Laba] was a young guy trying to find his way in the league. I certainly didn’t want to put him in difficult spots. I think now he’s got a year under his belt. I think he has a better understanding of how he needs to play in order to be successful. The one thing about Labs is he’s pretty good in the faceoff circle. I think he has a better understanding of how we’re trying to play. I think he can win faceoffs. He’s big and strong, he can defend well, he skates well.
“Our hope is maybe we can take J.T. and Mika out of some of those situations and deploy them in a more advantageous situation offensively to try to take advantage of their strengths as a group.”
Sullivan has been active with his in-game adjustments early this season. On Friday night, Tye Kartye was moved up to skate on the second line next to Miller and Pavel Dorofeyev.
Noting that the team felt flat in the middle part of the Rangers victory over Detroit, Sullivan sees Kartye as a perfect example of one of those players who can be plugged into the top of the lineup if the Rangers need a shake-up.
“I think that what I like about where we’re at is, there could be a little bit of interchange there,” Sullivan said. “Somebody moving in the top six, depending on what the lines look like and it could be on a nightly basis, depending on who’s playing well and what we think the needs are for a particular line in the top six. We have different players that we need different types of games, different skill sets. One of Tye’s greatest strengths is he can really skate. He’s a dog on a bone on the puck. So when he gets in on the forecheck, he’s a disruptive player.
“It helps his line establish a possession game in the offensive zone. We felt like we were just a little late arriving, and so that’s why we made the switch. I thought it helped us along with that.”
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