The Rangers, one of their Eastern Conference rivals and Tuesday's opponent, made headlines Friday night when Carolina acquired running back Mikko Rantanen from Colorado and Taylor Hall from Chicago.
They have no impact on the Hurricanes' potential improvement.
“I saw it,” Chris Kreider said Saturday after the Rangers practiced in Tarrytown. we are worried about ourselves. There's a game [Sunday]”
That attitude has served the Rangers well as of late, as they've been arguably the best team in the league since early January, catapulting themselves back into Eastern Conference playoff contention with less than one scoreless game. 1 month ago.
And there is a possibility that the roster could change before the March 7th trade deadline.
But when asked about the possibility of reinforcements on Saturday, head coach Peter Laviolette said, “The idea has never occurred to me.”
Instead, his focus remains on his current team, which is on a 10-game winning streak (7-0-3) and looking for its first three-game winning streak since mid-November.
“Right now, this team is playing really hard and trying their best to move up in the standings,” Laviolette said of the team's march from near the bottom of the East to the top of the wild-card spot. It's time to rise even higher.
“We've been slowly making progress,” Laviolette said. “We have a lot of work to do. We will focus on that.”
That situation continues Sunday, when the Rangers play Colorado, Rantanen's former team, at Madison Square Garden.
The turnaround in the season has been predicated on playing better defense overall, which has helped the Blueshirts improve on their 4-15 record.
“I think we quieted the game down,” Kreider said of his overall improvement in play over the last three weeks. “We're less likely to abandon high-risk opportunities en masse.” [and] Better protect the front of the net. This put us in a position where we could win hockey games. ”
And no team has done that better than the Rangers recently, making them a team still capable of achieving lofty expectations that seemed out of reach prior to this performance.
“I think every team has the same goal before the season: get to the playoffs, give ourselves a chance, get a ticket, work on the process and get better every day,” Kreider said. said. “That is where we are now and we will continue to build on the good and learn from the mistakes.”
From the desperate end to 2024, the effects of those mistakes are still being felt.
“I think it highlighted the need to tighten up some things on the defensive side of the puck,” Kreider said. “In doing that, we're showing that we're a pretty good hockey team.”
It will be about six weeks before the Rangers make any changes to their roster after the team made significant changes in December by trading captain Jacob Trouba and Kaapo Kakko (JT Miller remains in Vancouver).
Meanwhile, the Rangers are firmly in the running for the playoffs, which will likely put them in position to make another long postseason run.
