Rangers lose Ryan Lindgren for several weeks with upper-body injury
New York Rangers defenseman Ryan Lindgren. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
As exhilarating as the Rangers’ preseason comeback win over the Islanders was Tuesday night, it proved to be costly.
Defenseman Ryan Lindgren, who fought Scott Mayfield in the first period of the 6-4 win after Mayfield’s hit on Filip Chytil had left the center on all fours in center ice, will be out “at least several weeks’’ with an upper-body injury, the Rangers announced Wednesday.
The news was better on Artemi Panarin, who also left the game early. He is listed as being out day-to-day with a lower-body injury.
Lindgren, who signed a one-year, $4.5 million contract extension over the summer, attacked Mayfield in the corner as Chytil struggled to crawl toward the Rangers' bench. Lindgren was given a two-minute instigator penalty, along with a fighting major and 10-minute misconduct for starting the fight, but at the start of the second period, the Rangers announced the 26-year-old Minnesotan would not return to the game.
With Lindgren, the first-pair partner of Adam Fox, out of action for an extended period, the Rangers’ defense is going to need some reconfiguring. Connor Mackey, one of the group of players battling to earn the sixth and seventh defenseman spots on the roster, stood in at practice Wednesday as Fox’s partner for the day.
K’Andre Miller partnered with Jacob Trouba, and Chad Ruhwedel, who also is battling for a spot, partnered with Braden Schneider, with Ruhwedel, a righthanded shooter, playing the left side. Zac Jones, who had two goals in Tuesday’s game, partnered with rookie Victor Mancini.
Mackey, 28, signed with the Rangers a year ago as a depth defenseman, and played most of the season at AHL Hartford. But he was called up for one game in Ottawa on Jan. 27, the final game before the All-Star break when Lindgren was out with an injury and Trouba was suspended for elbowing Vegas forward Pavel Dorofeyev the night before. Mackey played a solid game that night and fought Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk, a fight that was credited with shifting the momentum in the game and helping the Rangers stage an important comeback win.
With Lindgren out, coach Peter Laviolette could elevate Miller to the top pair alongside Fox, and then switch up all the potential defense pairs going into the regular season.
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.
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