A look at what the Rangers face when they resume season

The Rangers will return from the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off break on Tuesday, when players who aren’t participating in the tournament reconvene for practice at 2 p.m. at the team’s Westchester County practice facility. They’ll have four days of practice — a kind of mini-training camp — before they  resume the season on  Saturday in Buffalo and on Sunday in Pittsburgh.

The Rangers are three points behind Detroit for the Eastern Conference's second wild-card spot and have 27 games remaining in the regular season to get back into the playoff picture. That should be enough time, but let’s see how they are affected by the tournament. They have six players taking part, the second-most of any NHL team (Florida has eight and Minnesota, Tampa Bay and Vegas have five each), and whether those players return energized and excited for the sprint to the finish or tired and beaten up remains to be seen.

Mika Zibanejad figures to be energized when he returns. The former No. 1 center, who has had a down year, closed the pre-tournament schedule on a roll with two goals and six assists in his last five games, coinciding with the addition of center J.T. Miller from Vancouver.

Coach Peter Laviolette’s decision to shift Zibanejad to the wing and play him on Miller’s line for the first four games after Miller was acquired seemed to get Zibanejad going. That seemed to carry over when Zibanejad got to the 4 Nations Face-Off, as he had a strong showing in Sweden’s overtime loss to Canada in the tournament’s opening game.

Zibanejad was quoted as saying how excited he was to be on a team in which all of the players and the coach were communicating in his native Swedish, rather than English, for a change.  Defenseman Urho Vaakanainen presumably will have enjoyed his time with the Finnish team, and the four Americans — Miller, Adam Fox, Chris Kreider and Vincent Trocheck —  no doubt will have enjoyed wearing the “USA’’ on their chests.

Of course, there are risks with an international tournament in the middle of an NHL regular season. Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore was injured in the Sweden-Canada game, will miss the rest of the tournament and is out on a week-to-week basis, according to the Golden Knights.

Assuming the Rangers' 4 Nations players are healthy and energized when they rejoin the squad, the team will have two weeks — and seven games — before the March 7 trade deadline in which they can try to fortify their squad.

General manager Chris Drury, who was active at the deadline in each of the previous three seasons, already has greatly reshaped the roster in-season, first freeing up much-needed salary-cap space by trading captain Jacob Trouba for Vaakanainen, then trading Kaapo Kakko for defenseman Will Borgen and most recently sending Filip Chytil, this summer’s first-round pick (top-13-protected) and prospect defenseman Victor Mancini to Vancouver for Miller.

Moving Trouba opened plenty of space — $16.48 million, according to PuckPedia — for Drury to acquire reinforcements at the deadline. The problem is the Rangers don’t have many assets left to trade for players who would help them this spring.  

They not only do not have a first-round pick this summer but don’t have a second-round pick, either, having dealt that to Arizona to get the Coyotes to take defenseman Patrik Nemeth in 2022. They also don’t have their own third-round pick (though they do have Seattle’s, from the Kakko trade).

So Drury will have to get creative if he wants to buy at the deadline. He’ll have to move future draft picks or prospects such as Brennan Othmann or Brett Berard to make deals.

He does have players on expiring contracts who might be desirable rentals at the deadline such as forwards Reilly Smith and Jimmy Vesey or defenseman Ryan Lindgren. But those players are contributing to the team right now, so if Drury moves one or more of them, he would have to replace them while trying to upgrade the roster at the same time.

If Drury can find some way of making trades at the deadline, his top priority likely would be bringing in a big defenseman who can clear opposing forwards from in front of the net and who can move the puck. In looking at the rosters of likely sellers, Seattle’s Jamie Oleksiak jumps out as one to perhaps keep an eye on. He’s 6-7 and 252 pounds, and while he’s not especially physical (44 hits in 57 games) he blocks shots (team-high 119). He’s not on an expiring contract but  has only one year left after this season at a cap hit of $4.6 million.

Coincidentally, Lindgren’s cap hit is $4.5 million.

By Colin Stephenson

colin.stephenson@newsday.comColinSNewsday

Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.