David Quinn returns to face a Rangers team he helped build

David Quinn has his own problems, obviously, as his new team, the San Jose Sharks, carry an 0-5 record into Thursday night's game against his old team, the Rangers, at Madison Square Garden.

But Quinn, who shepherded the Rangers through most of their rebuild, coaching them from 2018-2021, has seen the success his old team has had since he left, and he believes the current Blueshirts can win a Stanley Cup in the very near future.

“I wasn't surprised at what they did last year,’’ Quinn said before Thursday’s game of the Rangers reaching the Eastern Conference final last season. “They’ve got stars everywhere. They’ve got stars in net, they’ve got stars on the blue line, they've got stars up front. And they've been playing together a long time. They're a legit Stanley Cup team. They can win the whole thing.’’

If they do, Quinn will miss out on it, but he’ll have had a hand in building the foundation. He recognized the potential for Mika Zibanejad to be a star and played him as one. And it was his decision to play Zibanejad and Artemi Panarin on separate lines, and keep Chris Kreider on Zibanejad’s left wing. He put Adam Fox together with Ryan Lindgren and made them a top defense pair, and he put K’Andre Miller with Jacob Trouba, and made them a co-top defense pair. And when Gerard Gallant took over as coach before last season, he left all that in place because it worked.

Quinn said the rebuild timeline for the Rangers was always clear. In Year Four — last season — $18.5 million in dead money was scheduled to come off the Blueshirts’ salary cap, and that’s when they would start their ascent. But he also pointed to the fact that when the NHL paused its 2019-20 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rangers were two points out of a playoff spot and were one of the league’s hottest teams. Things might have turned out differently for Quinn had the season not ended when it did.

Still, Quinn graciously credited Rangers GM Chris Drury with doing “a great job’’ building on the foundation with some of the additions he made last season. And he said Gallant has done “a heck of a job’’ coaching the team after taking over for him.

After being let go by Drury following the end of the 56-game 2021 season, Quinn missed out on a couple of NHL jobs and coached Team USA in the Olympics and the World Championships. When former Rangers executive Mike Grier got the job as the San Jose general manager, he brought Quinn back into the NHL as coach of a rebuilding Sharks team.

The early-season schedule has been tough for Quinn and the Sharks. After opening the season in Europe, with back-to-back losses in Prague to the Nashville Predators, they came home for back-to-back games against Carolina, one of the top teams in the league, and Chicago. Then they went on the road for a New York area trip that saw them lose to the Islanders on Tuesday before taking on the Rangers on Thursday. They’ll face the Devils in Newark on Saturday afternoon before going home.

Quinn was asked what lessons he learned during his time with the Rangers that he could apply to the Sharks now. He said he learned he will need patience as the team goes through its growing pains.

“We're a little bit fragile right now,’’ he said. “And when you don't win quickly, and you’ve kind of been through what we've been through the last three years, you don't feel great about yourselves. But we're not that far off right now. We're in games, and all of a sudden we give up a goal, and because of where we are mentally, things kind of get a little bit away from us. And we've got to have the ability to stop that."

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.