It’ll take more than a five-game stretch for the Rangers’ power play to return to the level of past seasons. But the latest small step has been encouraging for the Blueshirts.
With Oliver Bjorkstrand’s goal in their 5-1 win over the Canucks on Friday to cap a four-game West Coast trip, the Rangers have now tallied a goal in four of their past five games — a 4-for-15 stretch that improved their success rate in 2026-27 to 20.6 percent, a mark that sits 18th in the league entering play Saturday. Everything started to shift when head coach Mike Sullivan switched his lines six games ago and began having star defenseman Adam Fox skate with both groups when possible, and some of the early returns with the new units have suggested a hint of progress with the once-struggling group.
In the second period Friday, Bjorkstrand veered into the bumper area before collecting a pass from J.T. Miller in the slot and scoring. Mika Zibanejad, Tye Kartye and Pavel Dorofeyev have also scored across the stretch since Sullivan made the changes, giving both of the new-look units a pair of goals. The primary change stemmed from Miller’s demotion to the second line and Gabe Perreault’s elevation to the first unit, but Kartye also joined the Blueshirts’ second group while Fox, with Sean Durzi out, quarterbacked both units as long as he didn’t need to skate down the ice following clears too many times.
The recent uptick in man-advantage production has added to special-teams success that already includes one of the league’s best penalty-kill units. After killing all four of their penalties against Vancouver, which marked a league-leading 14th time this season when they’ve had a perfect game on the penalty kill, the Rangers sat second in the NHL with an 89.1 percent success rate.
“I thought we spent a lot of time in our zone from the penalty-kill standpoint, but I thought those guys really dug in,” Sullivan said of the penalty-kill unit Friday, specifically referencing Noah Laba, Will Cuylle, Vladislav Gavrikov and Marcus Pettersson when they got stuck on the ice for long shifts. “They competed hard.”
Chris Kreider won’t get a chance at a Garden return this year.
The former Rangers star, who was traded to the Ducks in June 2025 and made his MSG return last year, was set to play his second game at his former home rink since the deal when the Blueshirts host the Canadiens on Monday, but Kreider was injured during Thursday’s game against the Bruins and given a recovery timeline of 6-8 weeks.
Kreider, who inked a one-year deal with the Canadiens for the 2026-27 campaign to join an Eastern Conference contender, had collected three goals and nine points through 19 games.
With his assist on Alexis Lafrenière’s goal in the second period Friday, Zibanejad extended his point streak to five games, and Fox recorded his team-leading 23rd point of the season with the secondary assist on Bjorkstrand’s power-play goal.
