{"id":347857,"date":"2025-11-01T11:26:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T11:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/347857\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T11:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T11:26:11","slug":"rangers-sticking-with-big-name-first-line-in-battle-vs-kraken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/347857\/","title":{"rendered":"Rangers sticking with big-name first line in battle vs. Kraken"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEATTLE \u2014 Head coach Mike Sullivan liked what he saw from the line changes he made to finish the Rangers\u2019 eventual overtime win against the Oilers on Thursday night in Edmonton.<\/p>\n

Though almost every other line scored, the newly constructed top unit of Artemi Panarin, J.T. Miller and Mika Zibanejad appeared to be the inspiration behind the changes. Not just the inspiration, but the starting point for the formation of the rest of the forward lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought we\u2019d practice with it again today and see where it goes,\u201d Sullivan said Friday before the Rangers\u2019 matchup vs. the Kraken on Saturday night<\/a>. \u201cObviously, the response we had in the third period may warrant giving it a chance. We haven\u2019t done it to this point for reasons. We\u2019re looking for a level of balance that we think is required to win. But sometimes, how you envision lines to play out and how they actually play out in real terms are two different things.<\/p>\n

\"J.T.J.T. Miller will remain on the top line with Mika Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin for Saturday night\u2019s game against the Kraken. Bob Frid-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think long and hard about this stuff. We\u2019re trying to put complementary skill sets together and line combinations that we think, \u2018Well, this should work just based on logic,\u2019 but it\u2019s not always the case, as we know. You don\u2019t actually know until you watch it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With such a front-loaded top line, the second unit features Will Cuyle, Noah Laba and Alexis Lafreniere. Part of what made Sullivan so comfortable with giving Laba the second-line center job was how well the rookie has performed as of late.<\/p>\n

Conor Sheary, Juuso Parssinen and Taylor Raddysh made up the third line, while the fourth unit remained intact with Adam Edstrom, Sam Carrick and Jonny Brodzinski.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re talented guys,\u201d Sullivan said of the top line. \u201cJT and Mika have played a lot together, they\u2019ve talked a lot about the chemistry that they have. Obviously, Bread has a body of work in the league that suggests he\u2019s a pretty talented guy offensively. They\u2019re three of our most talented offensive players. I think part of the logic was [that] although they\u2019ve created a fair amount of scoring opportunities, it\u2019s been a little bit of a struggle to find the back of the net.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRead the expert take on the Blueshirts\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been talking with the coaching staff for a number of days about this, potentially putting them together to see if maybe we can help them break out of it a little bit if we put them all together. We hadn\u2019t done it until [Thursday] night, but that\u2019s something that we\u2019ve had on the table for a couple of weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Since the Kraken joined the league in 2021-22, the Rangers have points in seven of their eight meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE \u2014 Head coach Mike Sullivan liked what he saw from the line changes he made to finish…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":347858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[66396,1302,293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-347857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-mike-sullivan-nhl","9":"tag-new-york-rangers","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115474202088874466","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347857","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=347857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}