2026 Rangers Report Card: Vladislav Gavrikov

This article is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Report Cards, grading the performance of each member of the 2025-26 New York Rangers. To view more report cards in this series, go here.

To read the Season Preview for Vladislav Gavrikov, go here. 

Expectations

The New York Rangers made some big changes leading up to the 2025-26 season. Out was the drafted and homegrown defenseman K’Andre Miller, partly to make room for Gavrikov, who signed a seven-year deal worth $49 million. While the Rangers opted to give a long-term deal to an older player, the hope was that they were prioritizing defense and bringing in a calm, steady presence to help stabilize their back end. Miller is a lot of things, and possesses a ton of talent, but Gavrikov possesses natural defensive acumen that Miller doesn’t.

The dream for most of us was that Gavrikov would slot in on the top pair right next to Adam Fox, allowing him to focus on offensive creativity and helping the Rangers win games by putting points on the board. Offense wasn’t something most of us anticipated from the Rangers’ newest marquee blueliner, so as long as he helped contribute by doing his best impression of a defensive safety net, while adding some solid penalty killing on top of that, most of us would call that a regular-season success.  

Performance

To avoid burying the lede, let’s call it out right now: Gavrikov’s season was a success.

The Rangers did exactly what many of us hoped they would and paired him with Adam Fox for most of the season. However, there were complicating factors at times, mostly Adam Fox missing 27 games due to injury. Even so, for most of those games, the top pair of Fox and Gavrikov was reliable, stable, and productive—which is truly something when you take a step back and see this season for the atrocious dumpster fire that it was.

Gavrikov played just under 900 minutes with Fox at even strength, and they posted a tremendous CF% of 55.2 when deployed together. The player he was paired with second most was Braden Schneider. That unfortunately tells a much different story as that duo struggled, losing puck battles and failing to suppress shots. Gavrikov was certainly not just buoyed by Fox, though. He posted even better possession metrics when playing with Scott Morrow, albeit in a small sample of about 30 minutes, but with an excellent CF% of 57.1.

Assessing Gavrikov individually at even strength, his numbers do drop a bit, posting a 50.2 CF%. That was lower than his previous few seasons with Los Angeles, but still a positive performance, especially considering this is his first year in a new environment with a new team and that, among defensemen who played at least half the season, he is only behind Adam Fox.  

Gavrikov was also leaned on heavily in all situations. He played in all 82 games and averaged the most minutes of any skater on the team. He consistently saw just over a minute of power-play time per game, which was more than double his previous career high, and also led the team in penalty kill time, averaging 2:38 per game. Likely due to his role and penalty kill time, he also recorded 102 blocks during the season, good enough for second on the team behind Braden Schneider.

Gavrikov’s defense was serviceable, and he empowered Fox to have close to a point-per-game season. But the cherry on top was Gavrikov’s surprising offensive contributions, scoring 14 goals and 35 points throughout the year. He was only behind Fox in points and led all the defenseman in goals scored. This was a new career best for Gavrikov, both in points and goals scored, but it’s really the number of goals he chipped in that surprised many.  The most he’s ever had prior to this past season was six, and he was able to more than double that, with 11 of them coming at even strength.

Grades

Author Grade: A

Banter Consensus: A-

Final Evaluation

It feels odd to hand out an A to almost any player this past season after the team secured last place in the Eastern Conference. But Gavrikov was signed to help Adam Fox do Adam Fox things, play a stabilizing defensive role, and contribute to the penalty kill. Aside from the hiccup of playing with Schneider, it’s hard to point out flaws in his past season.

The surprising offensive production from Gavrikov was also a welcome surprise, and I’d guess it elevates his score collectively for us here at Blueshirt Banter. When you sign a defensive defenseman and he outproduces most of your forwards, it’s hard to feel bad about that.

Next season, the defensive expectations for Gavrikov will be even higher. The team will be looking to him to maintain his positive metrics with or without Fox in all situations.