shut out in their home opener<\/a> Tuesday, the Blueshirts went on the road and blanked the Sabres 4-0 in their first game at Keybank Center on Thursday night. <\/p>\nThough the first win of the season was to be celebrated, it was overshadowed by the loss of Vincent Trocheck to an upper-body injury in the second period.<\/p>\n
It is unclear what led to Trocheck leaving the game with 13:10 left in the middle frame, but the Rangers ruled him out for the remainder of the contest at the start of the third. <\/p>\n
There was no further update on Trocheck, who was still being evaluated after the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s tough,\u201d said Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re, who notched the first Rangers goal of the season in the first period. \u201cHe\u2019s one of our best players, obviously. He does everything for us. Hopefully, he gets better soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carson Soucy (center) celebrates with teammates after scoring a third-period goal in the Rangers\u2019 4-0 road win over the Sabres on Oct. 9, 2025. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n
Trocheck wore a full face shield for a majority of the preseason and through the first two games of the regular season after the 32-year-old took a puck to the face in practice. <\/p>\n
It is unclear if the two injuries are related.<\/p>\n
The Rangers are already thin at center with Mika Zibanejad now skating on the wing. <\/p>\n
Vincent Trocheck left with an upper-body injury in the second period of the Rangers\u2019 road win over the Sabres. Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
If Trocheck has to miss some time, it\u2019ll be interesting to see if head coach Mike Sullivan opts to put Zibanejad back in the middle or insert Juuso Parssinen or Jonny Brodzinski into a center role.<\/p>\n
Noah Laba won the third-line center job out of training camp, but Sullivan might not want to load the 22-year-old rookie with too much responsibility too early by moving him up into the top six.<\/p>\n
The loss of Trocheck for any amount of time would impact the Rangers\u2019 special teams units as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lose Troch early, and everybody kind of digs in there,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cAnd obviously, [Igor Shesterkin] made some huge saves for us when we needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Fresh off a lackluster performance at home to start the season, the Rangers played a much more straight-line game Thursday. <\/p>\n
There was an offensive mindset to the team that was desperately missing in its season-opening shutout loss to the Penguins.<\/p>\n
As a result, Lafreni\u00e8re buried a rebound off a shot from Artemi Panarin to open the scoring. The goal ended a 71:43 scoring drought to start the season.<\/p>\n
Igor Shesterkin makes one of his 37 saves as Josh Doan looks for a rebound during the Rangers\u2019 road win over the Sabres. AP<\/p>\n
The Sabres found their legs toward the end of the first period, which carried over into the second as they outshot the Rangers 13-5. Three power plays certainly kept the ice tilted in Buffalo\u2019s favor as well.<\/p>\n
Shesterkin, however, preserved the Rangers lead with an 11-stop showing in the middle frame on the way to finishing with 37 saves on the night.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead the expert take on the Blueshirts\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Larry Brooks’ Inside the Rangers, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Despite the jumbled lines due to Trocheck\u2019s injury, the Rangers managed to keep the Sabres at bay through the final 20 minutes of regulation.<\/p>\n
Carson Soucy then padded the Blueshirts lead with just over five minutes left when the defenseman ripped one past Buffalo goalie Alex Lyon. J.T. Miller also registered his first goal as Rangers captain, tipping a Braden Schneider shot for the 3-0 lead before an Adam Fox empty-net goal.<\/p>\n
Alexis Lafreni\u00e8re (13) scored a goal on Alex Lyon during the first period of the Rangers\u2019 road win over the Sabres. NHLI via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cWe obviously had way more energy to start,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cJust from an energy standpoint, a lot of the guys, I think, felt a whole lot better physically, for whatever reason. I think that\u2019s where it started. But I also thought we had the right intentions. It wasn\u2019t perfect by any stretch. Buffalo has a dynamic offense and they\u2019re not easy to handle. But I thought the start of the game, that might\u2019ve been the best period that we played since training camp started.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BUFFALO \u2014 The Rangers pulled a 180-degree turn from their first to second game of the 2025-26 season.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":291048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[1720,149242,66396,1302,293,62,67,132,68,80412],"class_list":{"0":"post-291047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-igor-shesterkin","10":"tag-mike-sullivan-nhl","11":"tag-new-york-rangers","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-vincent-trocheck"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115348002922897931","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}