Rangers should chase down Devils ‘not just wild card,’ Martin Biron believes
The New York Rangers enter play Wednesday holding the second wild card in the Eastern Conference. But former Rangers goalie Martin Biron, who’s currently an analyst with TSN and NHL Network Radio, believes their sights should be set higher, even after struggling simply to get to this point with 21 games remaining on the schedule.
The Rangers (31-26-4) have won four of their past five games and seven of 10. They trail the slumping Devils (33-24-6) by six points for third place in the Metropolitan Division, and have two games in hand on their Hudson River rivals heading into a home game Wednesday against the first-place Washington Capitals.
So, think big, right?
“They’re only six points behind the Devils. That is significant. I don’t think Chris Drury is saying we’re going to get in as a wild card,” Biron told Forever Blueshirts on the RINK RAP podcast. “The injury to Jack Hughes, Jacob Markstrom missed some time. It’s almost like they’re looking at the Devils saying, ‘We could get in as the No. 3 in the Metro and really earn our stripes going into the playoffs.’ That to me is why these next few weeks are going to be interesting for the Rangers. Not just a wild card with Detroit and Columbus. It’s chase the New Jersey Devils if you can.”
The Devils (33-24-6) are vulnerable. After a strong start this season, they’re 9-13-3 since Dec. 28. They’ve won consecutive games once since then (Jan. 22-25) and are coming off a brutal 4-3 loss to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday, when Thomas Harley scored the game-winner with five seconds remaining in regulation.
In addition, the Devils announced Wednesday that Jack Hughes is out for the rest of the season following shoulder surgery. A simply massive blow.
Plus New Jersey’s top defenseman Dougie Hamilton left the game Tuesday with an injury and it’s unknown how long he’ll be out. It feels like it’s all falling apart in Newark.
The Rangers are in position to pounce, despite their own 4-15-0 nosedive in November and December which nearly submarined their playoff hopes. However, just when the Devils’ fortunes went south, things brightened for the Rangers, who are 15-7-3 since Jan. 2.
A 12-4-1 start to the season by the Rangers can’t be overlooked either.
“That’s what a good start to the season will do, right? They put some points in the bank and then when they struggled, they at least had that to back them up,” Biron explained.
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Martin Biron believes Rangers made ‘genius move’ trading for J.T. Miller
It’s never one thing that helps a team turn things around. And that’s true of the Rangers this season.
Biron points to two important factors that were key to put the Rangers in their current position and positive mindset after so much negativity earlier in the season. One, is that general manager Chris Drury — Biron’s teammate with the Buffalo Sabres and later the Rangers — stood by his veteran Stanley Cup-winning coach Peter Laviolette and instead made significant changes to the roster.
“What Chris Drury has done is say, ‘This coach is the coach I want, my coaching staff is the coaching staff I want. You guys, meaning the players, are on the ones on the hot seat and if you don’t perform, we’re going to move you,” Biron said.
Second was the impactful acquisition of J,T. Miller in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks on Jan. 31. That was the fourth and most meaningful trade Drury made in-season.
“Then he brought in J.T. Miller. I thought that was a genius move,” “What you did was basically bring in a guy that this is our leader now. You’ve got [Adam] Fox, [Artemi] Panarin, [Mika] Zibanejad, but people in New York are saying Miller is the one you’ve got to build around. That’s is pretty significant.”
Circling back to chasing down the Devils, it’s not exactly an easy task for many reasons. To begin with, there’s the surprising Columbus Blue Jackets, another Metropolitan Division team, to contend with. They’re two points ahead of the Rangers in the first wild card and just four point in arrears of the Devils, with two games in hand. Columbus plays both New York and New Jersey twice more this season. That could go a long way in deciding who finishes where in the standings.
The Rangers and Devils have one more meeting, April 5 at Prudential Center.
There are other factors like the Rangers inability to win more than two games in a row (no three-game winning streak since Nov. 14-19) and the chance to earn loser’s points along the way make things difficult to predict and not as easy as saying, win a certain amount of games and you’ll earn a certain spot in the standings.
But Biron is right. Set the sights high. Aim for bigger goal. Then see where you end up.
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