Rangers adamant skid will have silver lining on ‘the other side’

The Rangers’ mental push to isolate the last month — culminating in a four-game skid — as just another tough stretch that every team endures throughout the course of an 82-game schedule is both warranted and necessary. 

Of course, there is a major difference between a rough patch coming in January after you already had built a 25-9-1 head start and a 7-8 middling rut following a breezy six games against lower-tier competition to open a campaign. 

It is only two months into the season. Thanksgiving is not typically a notable benchmark. 

The Blueshirts would be remiss, however, not to address their deficiencies with urgency. 

So where is the confidence in the team to turn it around sooner rather than later? 

“High,” captain Jacob Trouba said following Wednesday night’s 4-3 loss to the Hurricanes. “Teams go through adversity. I think you’re a better team when you come out of the other side — and we’re going to come out of the other side. We all know it’s hard to go through. I think throughout the year, there are ups and downs and that’s how you build a team.” 

This matchup against the Flyers on Friday in Philly suddenly has implications in the standings. 

The gap between the upper and lower echelon of the Metropolitan Division has grown — and the Rangers are on the wrong side of it.

A loss would allow the Flyers to tie the Rangers with 25 points. 

As of Thanksgiving morning, the Rangers were six points behind the Capitals, who are the surprise third-ranked team in the division.

With their win over the Rangers on Wednesday night, the Hurricanes jumped over the Devils for first place in the Metro. 

The Rangers felt notably better about their performance against the Canes and see it as one they can potentially build off of. 

“We did enough to put ourselves in a good position to win [Wednesday night], sometimes it just doesn’t work out,” Reilly Smith said. “There’s a lot of positives from [Wednesday night], I think we’ve got to keep working on those. You work your way out of these holes as a group and that’s what we’re going to do.” 

Without Filip Chytil the last six games, and without Chris Kreider the last two, the Rangers have not only not been at full strength, but the two top-nine forwards’ absences have forced head coach Peter Laviolette to shuffle his lines. 

There’s no indication of how close or how far Chytil is to returning, despite the fact that he’s skated with the team since getting cleared of a concussion by specialists, but Kreider said the Rangers likely want him to get a couple practices/morning skates in before he plays after he returned to the ice Wednesday morning. 

Laviolette will have to decide whether to put Kreider back with Zibanejad, or keep Will Cuylle on the Swedish center’s left.

Kreider could also slot into the left-wing spot on the third line next to Kaapo Kakko and Smith, which would bump Adam Edstrom back down to the fourth line and likely edge Jonny Brodzinski out of the lineup. 

When Chytil returns, the Rangers could go back to Kreider-Chytil-Kakko, a line that only started two games together this season before the Czech center went down.

They only logged 13:04 of ice time, which is not nearly enough to draw any conclusions from. 

There are some inevitable positives on the horizon that the Rangers should look forward to. 

“I mean, yeah, it was a better effort, but all we care about is getting wins right now and we didn’t do that [Wednesday night],” Lindgren said. “We’re going to need more in Philly.”