Rangers give MULTIPLE updates... This is HUGE | NYR News

The New York Rangers are off to their hottest start in recent memory, and it is not a fluke as we have multiple new updates ahead of a crucial matchup against a divisional opponent with brand new insights from head coach Mike Sullivan on Igor Shesterkin, Mika Zibanejad, and so much more, including the power play as to why this is not a fluke. This is not a fun five-game stretch that we're watching the Rangers go through. No, this is sustainable. Something is different, and why you as a fan should be fired up for this Rangers team because something is different we're going to break that all down and much more in this episode of Rangers Digest but before we jump into all of that guys a quick reminder to hit that subscribe button we've noticed that a large percentage of you guys who watch these videos are not subscribed to the channel so if you want to stay up to date with everything that's happening with the Rangers make sure to hit that subscribe button i'm uploading daily videos on everything that's happening from lineup changes to game previews to post game reactions all of that fun stuff here on the channel and i am giving away a jersey here to one lucky subscriber for whatever comes first either 15,000 subscribers or the Rangers make the playoffs and if you've been watching the channel for a while you know i've been saying the Rangers are going to make the playoffs now the Rangers are chasing their fifth straight win and don't look now but slowly but surely out of the gate the Rangers have shot themselves right up to the top of the Metropolitan Division and as it stands right now today on October 9th the New York Rangers are first place in the Metropolitan Division now of course Carolina is right behind them and i would expect the Hurricanes to win this division i think this has been a brilliant start for the Rangers so far this season and they've been you know they've been beating some pretty good teams and the loss to the Bruins i mean if they were able to you know have maybe another pre-season game where they could establish their game a little bit more maybe that game would have went a little bit differently as well but it is what it is and they're four and one to start the season they play the Caps tonight the Caps currently fourth in the Metropolitan Division and it's going to be a big game this is another big game because the Rangers can win five in a row after dropping that first game now again if you look at the uh the current standings Rangers one Capitals uh currently a few spots below that uh fourth in the uh or sorry fourth in Eastern Conference but third in the Metropolitan Division and i wanted to get to this from Mike Sullivan because he was talking there's some great quotes from Mike Sullivan especially after last game and i wanted to get into it yesterday but i was still battling an illness and thank you guys for all the support i've seen some comments uh hoping that i do get better and i am feeling a lot better now but uh you know he said when you can stack wins on top of one another which they've been able to do for the first time in years by the way it breeds confidence and confidence is something required to have success and i do agree with that uh to a degree but they are just it's not even just confidence they are playing with confidence they're bought in they he's saying hey let's do this let's execute upon this and they're all doing it you can see it and they're all playing for each other you can see it through the first the last i should say four games of the season maybe not the first game of the season but you can see it through the last couple so credit where credit is due to Mike Sullivan he's been able to bring this team together to this point through everything the last well especially last season right and he didn't necessarily have the player personnel to do it but he's been able to you know bring everyone together so far this season and they are executing upon the game plan now i want to get into a few things that could improve including the power play because despite their great start there's a lot of room for improvement in a couple areas the third line for example the fourth line right now is dealing with an injury with Joe Veleno out we'll have an update on that later in terms of the um you know the lineup now in terms of the lineup heading into tonight uh the lines are the same projected lineup is exactly the same this is from Wally Walker uh they're looking pretty much like they're gonna roll what they have been which if it's not broke why fix it i mean uh Bolduan obviously was called up he's gonna be on the fourth line but nothing else is broken uh do not change anything so first line's been rolling we were talking about that the other day uh second line also rolling Carcier on that second line their advanced analytics are very good i mean they are controlling play a lot of the time and Carcier adds a lot of speed just straight line speed to that line so i really do like that so that is your projected lineup tonight uh for the New York Rangers against the Washington Capitals this game by the way in um Washington not in New York tonight but uh yeah that is what you're looking at right now uh one other thing to keep in mind too depending on i guess where they line up uh Mike Sullivan uh has been kind of switching Ty Cartier and Pavlutov if you have actually i i don't know if it has anything to do with the other winger i think it's more just trying Dorfeev in different spots he has been switching between wings a little bit this year and it was more so i think at the start um of training camp they were really trying that but throughout the season they're also kind of trying that this is what the uh the Caps project to look like tonight uh things can always change as well we have um i didn't get confirmation yet from their morning skate at the time of recording this but this is something that uh they could look like right now in terms of updates that we've got over the last little while this again from Molly Walker uh neither Jonas Korpusalo or Joe Veleno have resumed skating yet at all by the way they're okay so there's been some updates on Joe Veleno like he might not be out that long term on Korpusalo this has been the weirdest thing ever it was a dumb move to start in the summer acquiring him his cap space makes things so much difficult so difficult for everyone you almost lost uh your Dylan Girard your your current backup goalie to waivers because of this move you almost lost Matthew Robertson to waivers because of this move and people say i'm overreacting about it you put yourself in this situation right like it didn't have to happen this way uh and now he's just sitting there injured and there's no update on him so anyway they haven't resumed skating uh no further update from the New York Rangers on either player's timeline to return Joe Veleno i'm less worried about because it's a fourth line role and Colpo Dueen looked good last game so i'm excited to see what he's going to continue to do and he also spoke out by the way about playing his second NHL game this is from Peter Ball you know playing uh in his second NHL game against Alex Ovechkin who's playing in his 1577th game uh he said it's crazy to think about super special to do you watch him as a kid the greatest goal scorer the most goals ever and now we are going against him so that's pretty cool for Colpo Dueen as well like he gets to do that and like in a season where it was questioned if Colpo Dueen would make the NHL period he gets a great opportunity here to play Ovechkin in his last season where you don't know how the rest of the season goes maybe Colpo Dueen goes down to the AHL again and that's it we don't see him again for the rest of the year that's not nothing against the player not a knock against Colpo Dueen himself but maybe you never see him again and you never get to play Ove again so what a great opportunity for Colpo Dueen like that's that's cool what a cool story there uh and i think that's pretty uh pretty cool now one player i want to highlight heading into tonight um Mika Zibanejad in the last eight meetings uh he likes to play Washington this is a team that he really likes to play against so um he's a guy this is my player to watch out for tonight I feel like he can go off feeling really really good about himself after last game too you I feel like he was kind of everywhere like he was doing a little bit of everything last game so and I talked about that in my last video so uh look for him to be again in and around it all night tonight another thing i want from Mika and Lafrenière and i want to get into Lafrenière in a second too is a little bit more consistency over every game right in terms of point production but if you're bringing in every game and they're low scoring games and you're winning games by one goal i think that's fine too but maybe just a little bit more consistency and maybe it's more out of laugh than anything else but i would like to see some more of that as well and you know Mika's had a good start to the season all of a sudden you know point of game player he only has one goal in the season but obviously that'll come he's been good in the face off dot as well at almost 60 which is crazy uh so he's been uh off to a good start so far this season i want to see that progress and i feel like he's got better as the games have gone on as well so um we'll see how that looks tonight your starter tonight in goal uh not Dylan Grant of course because there's no back-to-back situation so Igor Shesterkin will be starting in goal for the uh New York Rangers against the Washington Capitals that is from Mike Sullivan today so that is confirmed he is starting uh and i don't know if you know that was a surprising thing i i wouldn't say that was surprising whatsoever but according to digest sports.com he is considered fresh right now he's had two days off since the last game so he is fresh ready to go he's rocking a .927 save percentage so far this by the way if you combine both goalies this season for the Rangers check that out so Grant hasn't let in a goal obviously he played the one game against Detroit got the shutout and Igor's rocking at .927 goaltending has been a huge factor for this team's success as well so uh really excited to see what he's gonna do tonight one thing you hear a lot about now around the NHL is quality starts and the Rangers are getting quality starts and they always really have out of Igor but they are getting quality starts every single game this season has been a quality start especially from um Igor should start right so uh he's been great absolutely fantastic of course one of them was the uh the three nothing loss to the Boston Bruins but since then i mean uh like he's posting some crazy numbers so um again excited to see what he's gonna do again tonight uh player to watch for the Washington Capitals in tonight's game Tom Wilson uh he's uh poised to you know he likes playing the Rangers too and we all know the history of Tom Wilson Tom Wilson excuse me don't like this player uh he's the player to watch for me against the Rangers tonight so uh he's off to a pretty interesting start himself he's over a point per game player he has four points so far in the three games that the Washington Capitals have played tonight last thing i want to mention is the Rangers power play and special teams overall so far this season all right so their power play is about halfway uh through the league like 17th there it is 17th of 32 teams so 21 percent is what it's operating at right now some of the points are actually coming from power play two which is where Game Perrow is uh the penalty kill has actually been very good so top 10 in the league at 87 i think there's room for improvement there too the Rangers actually had a pretty decent penalty kill last year as well which is crazy but um i'm looking for the power play to improve a little bit more i think there's another gear for this power play to get to but i think this game uh could come down to special teams as well so the Washington Capitals power play a little bit better uh their penalty kills better than the Rangers as well operating at 91.7 percent sixth in the league right now so we will see uh how this plays out but to me the rangers power play has to get going a little bit uh better i think so their top power play unit right now Miller, Zibanejad Lafreniere, Adam Fox uh played a total of 10 minutes they're operating at uh one goal right now and uh they need to get going a little bit better so uh that's that's one thing again a couple of the points have come on the power play from Gabe Prust right so that's something that uh needs to get going so guys let me know in the comments who do you think is going to win tonight the rangers or the capitals this is rangers digest i'm taking the rangers they've been hot i know the capitals have had a pretty decent start to their season as well in terms of how they've looked i think the rangers have played more games um but overall i think that the uh the rangers have been hot they're feeling good about themselves they're playing with a lot of confidence i think they go for five in a row here and i think they win again they've been imposing their will on other teams there's things they need to clean up and i would like to see the power play take a big step tonight because that's been a huge factor i also saw that i think they're like three for 14 or something like that on the season so far i don't have the exact stat but uh we need a little bit more out of that power play last thing i'll mention here is Sullivan was uh praising Lafreniere a little bit and he did say i also believe it was a big part of his overall growth and uh you know maturing as a player which is you know getting more minutes and being put on the power play and stuff like that and he really wants to see him take control of that this season and become the player we all know he can be and so far to start the season he's been uh he's been good he's been good so i'm excited to see where he goes i just want to see consistency out of him this season biggest thing for me is consistency because we saw it at the end of last season right i saw it it happened so then you go okay you can do this right so if you can do this can you do this all season right so that's the biggest thing that i want to see out of him but guys let me know in the comments how you feel about everything we discussed today Igor Shesterkin goes tonight mike sullivan praises a lot of players the rangers have been on fire best start to a season in 15 years at this point so let me know how you feel in the comments below.