Rangers vs. Capitals: Capitals Punishment
The Rangers were barely awake early, unstoppable late, and somehow walked away with a win—consider it a very on-brand holiday miracle.
- Well, that was a surprise. That escalated quickly. I mean, that really got out of hand fast. In the third period, that is.
- First, can we call this the Taylor Raddysh revenge game? Not that he has real reasons to want revenge on the Capitals. I have no idea if they offered him a contract, and he ultimately elected to sign the deal with the Rangers. But, yeah, he certainly got up to play his old squad:
NHL GameScore Impact Card for New York Rangers on 2025-12-23: pic.twitter.com/7KQXxgqAvu
— HockeyStatCards (@hockeystatcards) December 24, 2025
- On an unrelated point from what you're seeing there... can we call off the Gavrikov-Schneider experiment? It does not seem to be working. And, as Chip pointed out, I think we've already seen enough from Scott Morrow to make Schneider expendable. Schneider doesn't have the offensive game that Morrow has, and it's not like he's a defensive monster, either.
- It probably bears mentioning that Conor Sheary was a healthy scratch for this game. Look, I don't love the security blanket stuff either, but give Sullivan at least some credit for being willing to make changes of a throughly disappointing effort against the Nashville Predators (aided some by whatever virus is working its way through the locker room) in order to rearrange the lines. And, hey, in the end it worked.
