VANCOUVER — The Rangers’ lack of organizational depth up front has been exposed by the absence of Chris Kreider, the first-line left wing who will be sidelined for the remainder of the regular season (and indefinitely beyond that) following left hand surgery to address the injury he sustained March 21 in Columbus.
For without the rookie, coach Alain Vigneault either has been forced or has elected to repeatedly jumble his line combinations over the last week after having gone through the guts of the schedule with an uncommonly healthy and therefore stable lineup.
He has moved Marty St. Louis from one spot to another; experimented with Dan Carcillo on the first line in Edmonton; broke up and reunited the Benoit Pouliot-Derick Brassard-Mats Zuccarello triumvirate; had J.T. Miller in a top-nine role, then out of the lineup altogether.
And when Miller is scratched, that leaves the Rangers one forward shy on their top three lines. Thus, Vigneault not only has to move a fourth-liner into a role that doesn’t particularly suit that forward, but in doing so breaks up the extremely effective Brian Boyle-Dominic Moore-Derek Dorsett unit.
Vigneault was planning on just about mixing it all up for Tuesday’s match against the Canucks even in the wake of the Blueshirts’ 5-0 rout of the downtrodden Oilers on Sunday. The coach went so far as to return Brad Richards to left wing for the first time since Dec. 20 in conjunction with moving Carl Hagelin off the Richards-St. Louis unit into the spot that belonged to Kreider with Derek Stepan and Rick Nash, while also shifting Moore into a top-nine playmaker’s role.
“That’s just me being me,” Vigneault said following Monday’s practice here in which he rolled out his new combinations that included a fourth line of Carcillo and Dorsett flanking Boyle.
Actually, it was more like Vigneault being John Tortorella, the Vancouver coach who was famous — or infamous — for his constant line-shuffling when he roamed behind the Rangers bench for the last four-plus seasons.
The concept behind moving Hagelin into Kreider’s spot that he held from Dec. 15 through March 21 — a span in which the line was intact for 33 straight games and 39 of 40 — is to replicate the rookie’s speed and forecheck ability. But Hagelin lacks Kreider’s strength, physicality and ability to get to the front of the net and plant himself there as a screen. In other words, same speed but very different player.
At the same time, though, with Vigneault set to scratch Miller for the second straight night after benching him for the entire third period of Friday’s 5-4 defeat in Calgary, the Rangers had to start with the square-peg-round-hole thing.
Richards played the first 10 games of the season on the wing, filling in for Hagelin, who was on IR recovering from off-season shoulder surgery. He moved out of his natural center spot for six other matches, the last time on Dec. 20 against the Islanders. He is clearly more comfortable in the middle.
Vigneault, who has talked about his belief in “duos” rather than three-man combinations, is committed — at least for the short run — to keeping Richards with St. Louis, who enters the Vancouver match scoreless in his 14 games as a Ranger.
So without Hagelin to complete the trio, the coach chose to go with Moore, who does have some history playing with St. Louis in Tampa Bay, but not much of one.
According to hockeyanalysis.com, Moore and St. Louis played 187:03 as 5-on-5 linemates in 2010-11 and 2011-12. Each recorded five points, with Moore getting two goals and St. Louis one.
Miller, who spent most the year in Hartford before his latest promotion following the Kreider injury, was considered the only top-nine, NHL-ready forward in the AHL. Vigneault obviously doesn’t believe he is ready to play in a playoff race and doesn’t seem to consider Ryan Haggerty, the recent free-agent signee out of RPI who is traveling and skating with the team as a condition of his signing, a viable option.
Thus, the jumbled lineup after a long stretch of stability.