With Igor Shesterkin still daily with a groin injury and Alexandar Georgiev fresh off his third mid-game benching of the season, Keith Kinkaid has been tapped to start the Rangers game in Boston on Saturday afternoon.
It will be Kinkaid’s second start to his Rangers tenure since being called up by the taxi team earlier this month, shortly after Shesterkin suffered a “mild” groin load in a March 4 victory over the Devils.
Saturday marks the fifth game in a row for which Shesterkin was unavailable, adding further speculation that his injury was not exactly “mild”.
“It’s a really nagging situation,” said head coach David Quinn of Shesterkin’s injury on Friday. ‘We don’t think it’s a long-term thing. It’s just running a little bit longer than we thought. But you could wake up tomorrow and be in a good position and play sooner rather than later, so it’s really day to day. “
Kinkaid, who signed a two-year $ 1.65 million deal with the Rangers as a free agent in October, has played in the net three times so far this season, two of which were in relief for Georgiev.
At 42:46 of Ice Age in the Rangers’ 5-1 defeat in Pittsburgh last week, Kinkaid kept the team competitive, stopping 16 of the 18 shots he faced. He made his first start as a Ranger in the next game against the Penguins, but a defensive breakdown led to a 4-2 loss despite Kinkaid’s 23-save performance.
Georgiev conceded four goals on 14 shots in the 4-0 defeat to the Bruins on Thursday, prompting Quinn to use Kinkaid. The 31-year-old, in his eighth NHL season, turned aside all 13 shots he encountered in relief.
In an attempt to cause any kind of foul in Thursday’s shutout defeat, Quinn merged Alexis Lafreniere, Filip Chytil and Kaapo Kakko on what he called ‘the children’s line’.
The trio, with an average age of 20, recorded only a 5:12 ice age together and generated three shots. When asked if that was a line he was considering keeping together, Quinn said there were things he liked about it.
“There were some good signs as the game went on and they got a little bit familiar with each other,” he said. “So that’s something we’re definitely going to experiment with to get ahead.”
The Bruins’ Brad Marchand-Patrice Bergeron-David Pastrnak trio is not described as “The Perfection Line” for nothing, and it was fully seen against the Rangers on Thursday.
With two goals, five shots and four hits – including three assists from Marchand alone – the Bruins’ top line had its way to the Rangers.
“There is no doubt that they are one of the best lines in the league,” said Ryan Strome. “I think you just see the chemistry they have, I think sometimes it doesn’t look like they are creating too much and then boom. They just get great opportunities. That’s definitely a challenge for us, I think we’ve done a pretty good job against them this year. It will be quite difficult to put them all together.
“I think that’s kind of a trend they’ve set for the season. … I think we just need to pay a little more attention to details, I think we just need to be more aware of where they are, talk more like a group. “