Tonight’s contest is the second of four straight on the West Coast for the New York Rangers (8-6-4), who are coming off a 3-2 overtime loss to the Seattle Kraken on Nov. 17. The difficulty they have had generating reliable offense at 5-on-5 was evident during their latest defeat as both of their goals scored were on the power play. Becoming a more dependable goal-scoring club is the result of a balance between executing chances consistently at even strength and on the man advantage and they need to continue to improve upon that weakness to progress on offense.
The San Jose Sharks (6-10-3) are an underwhelming 1-6-3 at the SAP Center early on during the 2022-23 season. While they are six points behind the Kraken in the Pacific Division, they need to improve their play on their home ice before they fall further out of the playoff mix prior to the midway point of the year. Here’s our gameday preview.
New York Rangers Projected Lineup
Forwards
Chris Kreider – Mika Zibanejad – Jimmy Vesey
Artemi Panarin – Vincent Trocheck – Barclay Goodrow/Vitali Kravtsov
Alexis Lafreniere – Filip Chytil – Kaapo Kakko
Sammy Blais – Ryan Carpenter/Goodrow – Julien Gauthier
Defense
Ryan Lindgren – Adam Fox
K’Andre Miller – Jacob Trouba
Libor Hajek – Braden Schneider
Goaltenders
Igor Shesterkin – Jaroslav Halak
Rangers Struggling to Score Goals Consistently At Even Strength
Zibanejad, who tallied one of the two goals in the overtime loss to the Kraken commented on the challenges the offense has had in goalscoring at even strength, “We have good chances five-on-five, we can’t expect every shot to go in. When that conversation starts going, it gets frustrating that you can’t score five-on-five. Maybe you might overthink it, maybe you don’t have the confidence, maybe looking for an extra pass to make sure it’s a better opportunity than you have because you don’t feel confident that you’re going to score. It’s little things and it can swing so easily. I don’t think it’s going to come from being scared or thinking about it too much. We’re just going to fight through it. It goes up and down throughout the season,” (from ‘Rangers still trying to stabilize themselves in tight Metro division,’ New York Post, 11/18/22).
Zibanejad has a fair point in that scoring slumps occur naturally throughout the course of a season. However, it is concerning for a club that is aiming to have…
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