TIP OF THE KAAP'
REGARDING the Rangers, whose first stop on this fourgame tour in Vegas on Thursday will surely feature a video tribute to 2023 Stanley Cup winner Jonathan Quick.
1. I kind of think that the injury that sidelined Kaapo Kakko for seven weeks has almost liberated him from expectations that have been attached to No. 24 since the original Ping Pong Ball Kid was selected second overall in the 2019 entry draft.
Into the Finn’s fifth season, the comparisons with Jack Hughes have stopped. If you feel the need to still measure Kakko against one of the league’s most dynamic and skilled players — who was never, by the way, available to the Rangers — there must be something missing in your life.
Kakko has been knocked down again and again and again, and each time he gets up. He is as earnest as they come and as true a Blue blood as there is in the room.
Tell me how many players would have handled an unexpected Game 6 healthy scratch in the conference final with the maturity and equanimity the then 21-year-old did after being told by head coach Gerard Gallant to watch from the press box while his team was sent home by Tampa Bay in 2022?
The 2023-24 Blueshirts do not need Kakko to justify his draft position. They need him to be the best version of himself. If he can turn his assignment at right wing on the Mika Zibanejad-Chris Kreider connection into a full-time gig, the team will become immeasurably better off for it.
Not only will it strengthen and deepen the rotation, it would eliminate the need for GM Chris Drury to sacrifice assets ahead of the March 8 trade deadline to fill that spot when there are other holes to patch.
In the great old TV series, “The West Wing,” the campaign strategy for New Hampshire Gov. Jed Bartlet as he ran for the presidency was distilled to four words that became a touchstone for his two terms in the White House.
It was, “Let Bartlet be Bartlet.”
For the Rangers, and more so the universe that revolves around them, the message is just as simple.
Let Kakko be Kakko.
2. The Instagram post a couple of days ago by Filip Chytil of a picture of the smiling No. 72 on the ice with his trainer and Jaromir Jagr following a workout in Czechia leads me to believe that the centerman will return to New York in the nottoo-distant future to ramp up for a return to active duty.
This is just me, but I think that Chytil will be back during the Jan. 28-Feb. 4 bye period/All-Star break and start to practice with the team in short order, presuming he is medically cleared.
At this juncture, and off the picture that said 1,000 words in whatever language he was speaking at the time, it seems a matter of “when” Chytil rejoins the lineup, not “if.”
It is his life. It is his choice.
And I’d expect him to center the third line between Will Cuylle on the left and Blake Wheeler on the right. That would leave head coach Peter Laviolette with multiple candidates for the fourth line — including Jimmy Vesey, Barclay Goodrow, Nick Bonino, Jonny Brodzinski and Tyler Pitlick.
This, of course, is all pre-deadline.
3. You have to be able to separate the contract from the contribution. If you are unable to appreciate what Goodrow brings to the lineup and the room because you are blinded by the $3.64
million he is earning as a bottom-sixer, that is unfortunate.
Goodrow played his most effective game in weeks in Tuesday’s 5-2 victory over the Kraken, and I do not believe it was a coincidence that it represented his first game without a full shield since a puck slammed into his mouth in Ottawa on Dec. 5.
And perhaps it is not a coincidence, either, that Dec. 5 serves as the season’s line of demarcation. Goodrow is the most abrasive, contentious, physically confrontational player on a team that doesn’t have enough of his ilk. He couldn’t be himself wearing the shield.
I wonder whether there might have been a tête-à-tête between Goodrow and Sebastian Aho if No. 21 had been unencumbered when the ’Canes came to the Garden on Jan. 2 for the clubs’ first meeting since the Carolina center went leg-on-leg on Adam Fox on
Nov. 2. Instead, Aho escaped without retribution during the 6-1 fiasco of a defeat.
4. Erik Gustafsson might be the most cost-effective signing of the NHL free-agent season — the 31-year-old defenseman contributing 21 points (4-17) getting 17:19 of ice time per with a plus-one rating and an expected goal-share of 54.1 percent on a one-year contract worth $825,000. The Swede has been a valuable addition while becoming the most stable third-pair leftsider since Marc Staal’s final season on Broadway in 2019-20.
Still, I confess that I would be much more comfortable with a crease-clearing, menacing defenseman in that spot across from Braden Schneider when the playoffs begin.