When the Rangers return from their five-day stretch without a game, they’ll have questions to answer with their blue line.
The first involves the health of Sean Durzi, who took a third maintenance day since Oct. 21 at Tuesday’s practice and who head coach Mike Sullivan said postgame Monday is “battling through some stuff physically.”
And the second, if Durzi remains in the lineup as he has for all 14 Blueshirts games this season entering Sunday’s match with Edmonton, involves the status of his pairing with Marcus Pettersson after they were split up in the loss to the Kings.
Durzi and Pettersson have been nearly inseparable since they were acquired in separate July 1 trades — Durzi from the Mammoth in the Vincent Trocheck deal, Pettersson from the Canucks.
They skated together from the first day of training camp and were a “pretty solid pair” over the Rangers’ first seven or eight games, Sullivan estimated.
But then in the first period Monday, Sullivan started using Pettersson with Braden Schneider and Durzi with 18-year-old rookie Alberts Smits.
“I think they were more effective,” Sullivan said Tuesday when asked what the Durzi-Pettersson pair did better earlier in the season. “I thought they defended well. I thought their execution with the puck, helping us get out [of] our end, executing tape-to-tape passes, things of that nature. In particular, I think they were defending the rush much better.”
The Rangers have struggled defensively in front of their goaltenders in the wake of Igor Shesterkin’s season-ending injury, especially when it comes to containing opposing teams on the rush, but Sullivan has avoided any major change with his defensive pairings since the start of training camp.
Even with Scott Morrow waiting as the other right-handed defenseman on the roster — and a healthy scratch for every game. Even with Matthew Robertson on the roster to start the year, then in AHL Hartford after clearing waivers and now back as the other left-handed defenseman.
The Rangers’ three defensive pairings have remained the same at the start of each of their 14 games this season. But that could change by Sunday.
After Joonas Korpisalo, who continued skating on his own Tuesday, eventually returns from the lower-body injury that has kept him sidelined since the season opener, he’ll become the fifth goalie to appear in a game for the Blueshirts this season — joining Shesterkin, Dylan Garand, Spencer Martin and, for all of eight shots and three goals Monday,James Reimer.
It’ll mark the first time the Blueshirts have used at least five goaltenders in one season since 2009-10, when Henrik Lundqvist, Chad Johnson, Steve Valiquette, Alex Auld and Matt Zaba all logged time in net for them.
Before that, it hadn’t happened since 2003-04 (Mike Dunham, Jussi Markkanen, Jason LaBarbera, Jamie McLennan and Valiquette).
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