This afternoon the New York Rangers will look to trip up the Pittsburgh Penguins’ bid to return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Rangers have to feel good about themselves coming into today’s game. For the first time in a long time the team’s depth scoring came to life in Friday night’s 6-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres. Boo Nieves, Vladislav Namestnikov, Pavel Buchnevich, Jesper Fast, and Jimmy Vesey scored for the Rangers before Namestnikov added an empty-net goal to really and truly shake himself free of what was a lengthy goal-scoring drought.
The Penguins are currently sitting in the second Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference with a record 30-21-7. Sidney Crosby and company are coming off of a 5-4 defeat last night at the hands of the Calgary Flames. At this stage of the season, every game matters for a top team like Pittsburgh.
To the surprise of absolutely no one, Crosby leads the Penguins in scoring this season with 69 points in 55 games. His most frequent linemates over the last three games have been Bryan Rust and Jake Guentzel. That will be a line that David Quinn and the Rangers will need to keep tabs on.
Here are the lines that the Rangers used in warmups.
@NYRangers lines for warmups:
20-93-36
26-13-89
33 (Claesson)-16-90
72-24-23
D pairs:
77-54
18-44
42-22
Georgiev in goal— Colin Stephenson (@ColinASteph) February 17, 2019
Please use this as your open thread for today’s game.