After missing the first five games of the season with an upper-body injury, Ryan Lindgren is back in the New York Rangers lineup Tuesday when they visit the Montreal Canadiens at Bell Centre.
The 26-year-old defenseman was injured in a preseason fight with Scott Mayfield of the Islanders and will wear a bubble mask when he returns Tuesday.
“He’s a heart and soul guy. He plays hard every single shift, every game. He gives everything he has,” Rangers coach Peter Laviolette told reporters Tuesday. “You remove a guy like that from the lineup and you feel it. It’ll be nice to get him back in there.”
The Rangers are 4-0-1 starting the season without Lindgren and allowed 10 goals — an average of two per game. Six of those goals came in a wild 6-5 overtime loss to the Utah Hockey Club.
In a bit of a surprise, Lindgren will skate on the third pair with rookie Victor Mancini against the Canadiens. Lindgren’s long-time partner Adam Fox will continue to play alongside K’Andre Miller, who took Lindgren’s spot on the top pair the first five games.
And that also means Mancini, an impressive 22-year-old rookie, remains in the lineup at least for one more game. Zac Jones and Chad Ruhwedel each will be scratched Tuesday. It’s the second straight healthy scratch for Jones. Ruhwedel, who began the season as the extra defenseman, played his first game Saturday, a 4-1 win against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Related: Rangers coach tells Zac Jones to ‘keep doing your thing’ despite latest scratch
Victor Mancini remains in Rangers lineup against Canadiens
Assuming the Rangers won’t carry two extra defensemen, that means one must be removed from the roster before their game Thursday at home against the Florida Panthers. Mancini appears to be the obvious choice because he’s the only Rangers defenseman who doesn’t require waivers to be assigned to Hartford in the American Hockey League.
But the kid has impressed since the start of training camp and shown the NHL game is not too much for him. He scored his first NHL goal in a 5-2 win at the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday and picked up an assist Saturday. He’s big (6-foot-3, 229 pounds) can skate and is solid at both ends of the rink.
Laviolette said Monday that Jones hasn’t done anything to deserve being removed from the lineup. So, perhaps, the coach is giving Mancini one last look before sending him down to play heavy minutes in Hartford. Which would clear a path for Jones to return to regular duty on the third pair in New York. And Ruhwedel then slides back into his seventh-defenseman role.
Lindgren signed a one-year, $4.5 million contract with the Rangers this past summer that walks him straight into unrestricted free agency. Faced with having to re-sign goalie Igor Shesterkin to a massive contract and looming large raises expected for Alexis Lafreniere and K’Andre Miller, the Rangers simply may not have enough money to bring Lindgren back after this season.
In 333 games with the Rangers, Lindgren has 80 points (10 goals, 70 assists) and 219 penalty minutes. He’s a plus-99 in his NHL career, including a plus-29 in 2022-23 and plus-20 last season. He’s blocked 456 shots since his first full season in 2019-20, third most on the Rangers.
