VANCOUVER, British Columbia — When a mid-game lineup tweak results in four goals for a star player, the only thing to do is see it through.
“Got to try it again, for sure,” said Rangers head coach Gerard Gallant, who did just that by lining his team up for practice Monday at Rogers Arena the same way it ended Saturday’s 6-2 win over the Hurricanes on Saturday night, when Artemi Panarin recorded his first career four-goal game after swapping places with Chris Kreider to skate next to Vincent Trocheck.
“You’re trying to win games. It was 2-1 [in Carolina on Saturday]. Sometimes you want Kreider’s speed up there and the way he plays a north-south game. Bread plays a little different game, an east-west game more. You change things up. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.”
The late second-period alterations certainly worked, propelling the Rangers to their fifth straight win and earned them their 69th and 70th points of the season. If changing the lines is an indication of Gallant’s will to win games, look no further than how the Rangers’ second-year coach has operated this entire season.
Artemi Panarin’s four-goal game has Gerard Gallant ready to run it back with his lines. APNo matter how many line combinations the Rangers have deployed, Gallant is always going to go with what’s working at that moment. As of Saturday night, the Panarin-Trocheck connection is what’s hot. It may not have been the case all season, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have spurts of success or work its way toward consistent chemistry.
As Trocheck told The Post’s Larry Brooks after facing his former team for the first time in Raleigh since signing with the Rangers as a free agent last offseason, the 29-year-old center may have started to grip his stick a little tighter amid all the talk that he didn’t mesh well with Panarin. After being brought in to do so, that notion could get into any player’s head.
Trocheck and Panarin didn’t start together in the previous seven games, as well as a stint of nine games in December, so it’s possible some time away was beneficial. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? The Rangers certainly hope so, especially since unlocking Panarin in the home stretch of the season will be crucial for playoff-seeding purposes.
Gallant spoke with and seemingly understands Vitali Kravtsov’s Rangers plight. Corey Sipkin for the NY POSTIn wake of Vitali Kravtsov’s trade request, Gallant was asked if he had to have a conversation with the Russian winger.
“It’s not easy,” he said. “He’s a top-nine player, and right now, he’s not in our top-nine. He’s not going to be a fourth-line player. He doesn’t play in that role for our team. We like him, I like him. He’s a good kid. He’s got to continue to work hard when the chance is available. Take advantage of it. You don’t give anything to anybody. You got to make them earn it.”
Panarin was named the first star of the week by the NHL after leading the league with four goals and five assists in four games.
