NY Rangers Game 8 Open Thread: Rangers vs Tampa

The Rangers rebounded nicely against Vancouver on Sunday night after losing Igor Shesterkin for the season in the prior game. Day two of the Dylan Garand era is tonight against a far tougher opponent. The Tampa Bay Lightning return to MSG after getting beat down by the Rangers in the home opener earlier this month. Tampa will have JJ Moser back in the lineup, but are playing 11 forwards and 7 defensemen tonight. Seems like an odd decision since they have cap space, but what do I know.

If Garand continues to play to a .905 SV% and the Rangers continue to allow somewhere between 20-25 shots per game, then they will never be truly out of any game. That’s about 2-3 goals per game, and the Rangers certainly have enough talent to match that. The question is consistency on offense, which has been lacking. They’ve had 4 solid games and 3 inconsistent games on offense. Let’s hope the former wins out tonight, but it’ll be tough without Igor Shesterkin to contribute a goal this time around.

Rangers Lines

Gabe Perreault-Mika Zibanejad-Pavel Dorofeyev
Tye Kartye-JT Miller-Alexis Lafreniere
Will Cuylle-Noah Laba-Eeli Tolvanen
Oliver Bjorkstrand-Cole Beaudoin-Matt Rempe

Vlad Gavrikov-Adam Fox
Marcus Pettersson-Sean Durzi
Alberts Smits-Braden Schneider

Dylan Garand gets the start.

Scratches: Jaro Chmelar, Scott Morrow
Injuries: Joe Veleno (IR – lower body), Joonas Korpisalo (IR – lower body), Igor Shesterkin (LTIR – lower body)

Lightning Lines

Gage Goncalves-Brayden Point-Nikita Kucherov
Brandon Hagel-Anthony Cirelli-Jake Guentzel
Ilya Mikheyev-Zemgus Girgensons-Pontus Holmberg
Jeffrey Viel-Connor Geekie

JJ Moser-John Carlson
Ryan McDonagh-Erik Cernak
Victor Hedman-Maxwell Crozier
Charlie-Edouard D’Astous

Andrei Vasilevskiy gets the start.

Game time is 715pm.