Peter Laviolette picking up where he left off with his Rangers combos

Artemi Panarin on the left with Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafreniere.Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad side by each.

Filip Chytil with trusty companion Kaapo Kakko on his right and Will Cuylle on the left.Jonny Brodzinksi taking spins between Matt Rempe and Jimmy Vesey.

Adam Fox and Ryan Lindgren together again, Braden Schneider skating with K’Andre Miller with Jacob Trouba on Zac Jones’ right side.Quick-paced battle drills.A varsity group of 23 on the ice at the Rangers practice rink.It could have been April.It could have been the playoffs.It was Friday.It was the second day of training camp.“It was hard, actually, between us, especially the first practice,” Panarin said after the double-session on which the group spent close to 90 minutes on the ice, the final half-hour devoted to systems.“I was glad to have the system practice, it’s kind of easier.“But everything is 100 percent.”The varsity on the ice had 13 forwards.

Reilly Smith and Sam Carrick were the only newcomers, having replaced Jack Roslovic and Barclay Goodrow.Ben Harpur and Connor Mackey skated as the fourth pair in the group of eight defensemen.We are two days into 2024-25 but it sure seems like this is, what, Day 300 of 2023-24.

It seems less like a new year than a continuation of last year.It was this way from 2013-14 through 2015-16 when Alain Vigneault was behind the bench and the club made few personnel changes from one year to the next.

It always seemed like those Blueshirts were picking up where they left off.“It probably could be both at the same time,” head coach Peter Laviolette said.“There’s definitely a want to get better from where we were last year.

I definitely think that’s in place.There are new pieces here.

There are pieces who are not here anymore.There are players that want to continue with where they took their game to last year, they want to continue to push, and there might be players who didn’t have the year they wanted last year and they wan...