Here are today’s news and links:

Rangers News:

• Highlights: VGK 4, NYR 2 (4:07 video via NHL.com)
• Game Recap: Two tallies from ex-members of the Rangers organization helped bury the Blueshirts enough to make a late game rally too little, too late (CBS)
• Colin Stephenson heard from Henrik Lundqvist prior to last night’s game about the team’s expectations for the second half of the season (Newsday)
• Dave Shapiro discusses why James Dolan’s recent remarks concerning the Rangers are both encouraging and alarming (Blue Seat Blogs)
• Rob Luker dives into New York’s numbers to see how they’ve lost games throughout the season (Blue Seat Blogs)
• Jordan Colberg notes that the Blueshirts’ unexpectedly decent start has come crashing back down to reality (The Hockey Writers)
• $hayna Goldman argue$ that clearing out the logjam of defen$eman on que$tionable contract$ would go a long way toward$ fixing New York’$ defen$ive woe$ (The Athletic)
• Media Availability: David Quinn,(2:19) Chris Kreider,(2:16) and Brady Skjei (0:45) (Official Team Site)/

Around the NHL:

• Thomas Ketko reports that Montreal Canadiens’ defenseman David Schlemko cleared waivers yesterday, and will be reporting to AHL Laval (Sportsnet)
• After skating in only 17 games following a November trade from Chicago, Arizona Coyotes forward Nick Schmaltz is set to miss the rest of the 2018-19 campaign due to a “lower body injury” (TSN)
• James O’Brien highlights the fact that Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov is scoring points at a level the league hasn’t seen since the turn of the century (NBC Sports)
• Shayna Goldman examines how taxes in specific markets impact a player’s take-home salary (Hockey Graphs)/