Moving up has Kakko back on his game

Watching Kaapo Kakko go through a bit of a struggle left Rangers coach David Quinn with two options for his 18-year-old rookie.

“You can either demote him and put him in a fourth-line role and take him off the power play, or you can give him one more opportunity to get engaged and get their game to where they need it to be, and where we need his game to be,” Quinn explained after his team’s 4-0 win over the Devils on Saturday afternoon in Newark.

So Quinn moved Kakko up to a line with Artemi Panarin and Ryan Strome for the rare moments when this penalty-plagued game was played at even strength. And Kakko got his first point in five games, making a slick cross-ice pass to set up Adam Fox’s first-period powerplay goal.

“I loved how he responded,” Quinn said. “I thought it was his best game in a while.”

Quinn juggled all the lines, putting Brendan Lemieux into the top-six next to Mika Zibanejad and Pavel Buchnevich, while Chris Kreider went down with Filip Chytil and Jesper Fast.

That left Brett Howden to center a fourth line with Brendan Smith and Micheal Haley, who was back after sitting for two straight, while

Boo Nieves was the scratch. “Just having those four centers gives us a little more balance,” Quinn said. “Throughout that lineup, there’s a little bit everything on each line. It was something we were looking to do, and we thought about for a while.”

The Rangers took their fourth too-many-men penalty in the past six games, and their fifth in the past nine games. But rather than Quinn almost losing his mind — as he did in the past — he saw this one a little differently. It happened when Zibanejad just hopped over the boards for a regular change and got hit with the puck.

“It’s bang-bang. I’m not mad at anybody, I’m not going to sit here and be pissed off about it,” Quinn said. “If we all want to make a big deal out of it, we can. I get why. But that is really a faultless one in a lot of ways.”