Rangers vs. Maple Leafs: Back to Earth
Dylan Garand finally came back down to earth, Adam Fox piled up the assists, and a late goal stung. Plus: where the goalie search should go from here.
- On this week's episode of Blueshirt Bandwidth (out now, so listen and subscribe in your favorite podcast feed), Joe and I talked a lot about Dylan Garand. And with good reason. After and because of the injury to Igor Shesterkin, he's been the story of the season so far. In noting how well he's played so far, I said that it was inevitable that he would come back down to earth a little bit. Well, this was that game.
- Garand posted a -2.03 goals saved above expected (GSAE), per MoneyPuck. For what it's worth, Sergei Bobrovsky also had a -2.01 GSAE. Not a great night for either goaltender.
- Rumors continue to swirl tying the New York Rangers to several potential goaltending options. Some of them make a lot more sense to me than others do. The only way I have any real interest in taking on a goaltender with real term (who isn't named Connor Hellebuyck, but that's not happening) is in a scenario where the Rangers are helping to facilitate a trade for Hellebuyck and are taking on the current goaltender of the team acquiring him, and that team is also throwing in a sweetener for the Rangers to do so. I still don't think this is really necessary unless Garand completely collapses.
- Goalies will have nonstellar games every once in a while. They're human. Even ones like Igor. So, unless this becomes a pattern with Garand in this long run of starts he's going to get—I expect him to be in net every game between now and the first set of back-to-back games they have in late November—I think they should focus their attention on more reasonably priced goaltending options to give the team some support.
- We also finally got an update on Joonas Korpisalo. And … yuck.
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— Blueshirt Banter (@BlueshirtBanter) October 22, 2026
- The Toronto Maple Leafs are definitely better than they were last year, when Chip accurately predicted their collapse. Adding Kirill Marchenko in place of Matthew Knies was a great move on their part. They did great work on the free-agent market. Bobrovsky is older, but he's playing fine for them (+2.4 GSAE so far this season). They're going to score the goals. Whether they can keep enough pucks out of their net to be a consistently winning team is still an open question.
