Before Wednesday night, the Rangers lost only one player on the COVID protocol list, when Kaapo Kakko missed the match against the Penguins on February 1 with a false positive test.
Kakko is back on the list on Saturday, when he was eliminated for the Blueshirts game in Washington and stayed there for the game on Wednesday in Philadelphia. However, that was not all, as the Blueshirts also put K’Andre Miller on the list in the hours leading up to the 4-3 defeat against the Flyers.
It is unclear whether Miller, who was replaced by Jack Johnson, tested positive. It is also unknown whether the Rangers could be vulnerable to an outbreak following these situations, which occurred five days apart.
Johnson, a scraper for Saturday’s victory over the Capitals, played in the Rangers’ 3-2 victory in Philadelphia last Thursday after missing the previous eight games with a groin injury. He participated in only one practice before rejoining the series.
Mika Zibanejad may have played his most dynamic game of the year and collected a few assistants in 20:20 ice time, but he was denied twice on short breaks away, the second with 3:40 left and the Blueshirts with 4-3. Zibanejad was also denied earlier, with 5:45 left in the first period, when the bag rolled on him.
Both times he went to the backyard. Both times, Brian Elliott was up to the task. He was asked if he thought he might have succeeded if he had experienced a normal season, not the one in which he has two goals, with one in an empty net.
“I do not know. I did the move I usually do, he read it, it did not go in,” Zibanejad said. “So I do not know. It is a difficult question to answer. It just leads to more speculation. I try to keep it as simple as possible and not think about the chances. “
The pair of assistants doubled the center’s total season to four times.
The Blueshirts conceded 39 shots, the most they have allowed this season.
The Rangers, 2-for-5 on the power play, have now passed in three runs with the man advantage (4-for-15) after being 0-for-14 in the previous five games.
In the absence of Miller, Kakko, Jacob Trouba (thumb) and Artemi Panarin (leave), Brendan Smith and Anthony Bitetto were on the points ladder during the power play of the second unit. The Blueshirts recorded ten powerplays, with the first unit for nine of them.
The Rangers have won just 20 of 55 games (36 percent), and Zibanejad has won just two of its 14 draws.