The New York Rangers didn’t make many moves this summer following their Presidents’ Trophy winning season, but coach Peter Laviolette expects changes to be made.
By many people’s standards, the Rangers had a fantastic season. While that’s true in some sense, New York lost to the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final where there were clearly flaws shown in their game.
Laviolette is determined to ensure the Rangers build upon their mistakes of the past as their championship window remains wide open.
“This group will be new,” Laviolette said via Dan Rosen of NHL.com. “Even though there are a lot of familiar faces, and a lot of the coaches will be the same, there is change in some of these places and we have to look to build it again, look to get better from where we were last year.”
The Rangers went out and traded for Reilly Smith and signed Sam Carrick to bolster their forward core.
Other than those two moves though, Chris Drury took a very conservative approach and the Rangers are coming back with nearly an identical roster to the one they had this past season.
Laviolette is looking to shake up the lines a bit in order to find a new spark, which will likely be discovered at training camp.
“There are a lot of things I’m familiar with and I have a comfort level with, and then there are things we will see if we can find some chemistry with through different avenues,” Laviolette said. “It’s hard to give an exact answer and say this is locked in. You’d like to say that, but you’ve got to go through training camp, get some practices and play some games.”
The Rangers are set to begin training camp at some point in September and Laviolette will have some big decisions to make.
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