Revamped Rangers blue line could be start of something new and improved
Just four defense pairs in the NHL have been on the ice for at least 3,600 minutes at five-on-five over the past four seasons beginning in 2020-21, and two of them belong to the Rangers, who have been a study in stability on the back end. Pretty much from the moment K’Andre Miller left Wisconsin to turn pro in 2020-21 under then-head coach David Quinn, the top four has been inviolate except to accommodate injuries.Miller has skated on the left with Jacob Trouba while Adam Fox has been on the right with Ryan Lindgren.
They have been the equivalent of 1A/1B matchup pairs. The Miller-Trouba tandem was on for 3,914:19 over the past four seasons while the Lindgren-Fox duo was on for 3,603:10.Carolina’s Brady Skjei-Brett Pesce pair led the league in five-on-five minutes the past four seasons at 3,976:13 while the Kings’ Drew Doughty-Mikey Andersson tandem ranked third at 3,865:35, per Natural Stat Trick. But partially because of the preseason upper-body injury sustained by Lindgren in the second exhibition game that landed No.
55 on IR and partially because head coach Peter Laviolette wanted to see a different look, the Blueshirts went with three essentially new combinations in their 6-0 rout at Pittsburgh in Wednesday’s opener. The first pair featured Miller on the left with Fox in which the club’s two most mobile and offensively gifted defensemen were united.There has been talk about this look for a couple of years, and before Wednesday the young defensemen had been on for 337:34 at five-on-five the previous four seasons. Almost incredibly though, Wednesday represented just the sixth game in which Nos.
79 and 23 started as a pair — and just the second since the final four contests of the 56-game, 2020-21 season.Not once in 2021-22, not once last year.
The last time Miller and Fox had formed a tandem came in the 13th game of the 2022-23 season against Detroit at the Garden on Nov.6 when Lindgren was sidelined. The second pair in Pittsburgh featured...