Daily Report – 12/22/25
Rangers
This crew doesn’t handle back-to-backs very well. At all. They are 0-6-1 in the second game of a back-to-back set this season.
I’ve heard various opinions on how it feels to play back-to-backs, and the Rangers have six more left this season. Undoubtedly, they are challenging. Hockey is grueling enough already, and to play consecutive days is even harder. I’ve also heard that when a team is riding an offensive groove, back-to-backs can be fun.
“You’ve got to be able to win with your B-game if you don’t have your A-game,” said head coach Mike Sullivan. “The way you do that is you don’t beat yourself. You force teams to have to make good plays to beat you. You defend hard, you manage the puck, you make them play goal line to goal line. You watch your shift lengths. You change smart. You don’t take offensive zone penalties. I just don’t think we did that in any aspect of it.”
What isn’t fun is a team entering the second leg of a back-to-back without three players from the day before. Captain JT Miller reaggravated an upper-body injury on Saturday, and Matt Rempe and Gabe Perreault were out sick on Sunday. However, this is not an excuse, especially since the Nashville Predators entered this game tied for the fewest points in the NHL, and they have given up some of the most goals in the league this season.
“It just looked f*****g dead,” said a candid Vincent Trocheck after yesterday’s 2-1 loss in Nashville. “Just looked dead.”
There’s an illness spreading through the Rangers’ locker room. It appears to be a stomach virus. It got Artemi Panarin last week, and now it hit Rempe and Perreault. “Obviously, it’s something that’s going through our team right now,” said Sullivan. “We’ve got a few guys that have it. We’ve got to find a way to fight through it.”
On Saturday, a thrilling 5-4 comeback win in a shootout at home against Saturday lived in the shadow of JT Miller’s upper-body injury. After taking a hard hit by Nick Seeler in the third period, he hobbled to the locker room clutching his right arm. It’s an injury that’s lingered all season, but hard contact in the tender area is never good. Now, he’s week-to-week, and the Rangers placed him on injured reserve this morning.
“He’s the leader of this group in so many ways,” Sullivan said. “Emotionally, with how he plays the game. I think his game was really building, too. His game was really starting to come, especially on the offensive side.”
Nevertheless, the Rangers were able to navigate the loss of Miller on Saturday. After Mika Zibanejad tied the game with a third-period power play goal, they miraculously killed off two penalties in overtime to advance to a shootout. In the shootout, Artemi Panarin and Vincent Trocheck each cashed in while Shesterkin made two saves.
Shesterkin struggled mightily in the second period, allowing four goals on 11 shots. “We went into the second period without a goalie,” he said. But he regained composure in the final frame and didn’t allow any more goals. His superb performance was the reason why the Rangers survived two penalties in overtime and won in the shootout.
Yesterday, Jonathan Quick manned the net, and he, too, was fantastic. He stopped 30 of 31 shots (the second goal came with the Rangers’ net empty), but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Predators. It wasn’t Quick’s fault that the offense in front of him only generated three high-danger scoring chances (Clear Sight Analytics).
I’ll plug Vincent Trocheck once again: “It just looked f*****g dead.”
The Rangers have been shut out seven times this season. Remarkably, they narrowly avoided their eighth last night. Their only goal came with 35.9 seconds left in regulation, courtesy of Jonny Brodzinski, immediately following Steven Stamkos’s empty-netter that felt like a dagger to the heart of the tender Blueshirts.
But Brodzinski’s goal didn’t matter. It was too late. The Rangers lost the subsequent faceoff, and when Mika Zibanejad and Will Cuylle tried to thread long passes to gain the attacking zone, they each turned the puck over.
Again, Trocheck offered an honest report: “If there’s anything to take away from today, we didn’t play with pride.”
Schedule
8:15 PM: Monday Night Football (MNF), Week 16 – San Francisco 49ers (10-4) at Indianapolis Colts (8-6); ESPN, ABC
