The Rangers head into Friday night with a chance to finish their western swing the right way, and the matchup in Vancouver looks like one they should handle if they keep playing the way they have lately.
New York visits the last-place Canucks at Rogers Arena with a 11-8-1 record and a shot at turning a solid road trip into a winning one. A victory would give the Rangers three points in the Pacific Northwest trip’s final game and leave them sitting in third place in the Metropolitan Division at the quarter-mark of the season.
They arrive in Vancouver after a 3-1 win over the Calgary Flames on Wednesday, a game that followed a 3-1 loss in Edmonton and a 4-3 win over the Seattle Kraken to open the trip. The bigger picture is even better for New York: the Rangers have won four of their last five after a four-game losing streak.
Mika Zibanejad is riding a four-game point streak with two goals and four assists, and he had his first multi-goal game of the season against Calgary. Tye Kartye has been finding the net too, scoring in three of his last four games, including an empty-net goal in Calgary, and he is second on the Rangers with seven goals.
Friday also brings a pair of familiar faces into the spotlight. Defenseman Marcus Pettersson returns to Vancouver for the first time since the Canucks traded him to the Rangers this past summer. He has settled in exactly the way New York wanted, giving the team a reliable defensive presence on the second pair and the penalty kill while ranking third on the club with 20:55 of ice time per game.
On the other side, center Filip Chytil will face the Rangers for the first time since New York dealt him to Vancouver in January of 2025. Chytil is back in the Canucks lineup Friday after his second shoulder injury of the season. The Rangers’ first-round pick in 2019 has two assists in seven games this season.
Vancouver’s season has gone off the rails. The Canucks are 3-16-1, last in the NHL for the second straight year, and they’ve managed just one home win.
They have only one regulation victory in 20 games, and without Thatcher Demko in goal all season, their numbers have cratered. Vancouver owns the league’s worst team goals-against average at 4.50, sits at minus-34 in goal differential, and has the NHL’s worst penalty kill at 63.1 percent.
This is the final meeting between the teams this season. New York took the first one in convincing fashion, beating Vancouver 6-2 at Madison Square Garden on Oct.
- Kartye and Will Cuylle each scored twice in that game.
New York Rangers projected lineup
Gabe Perreault - Mika Zibanejad - Alexis Lafreniere
Tye Kartye - J.T. Miller - Pavel Dorofeyev
Will Cuylle - Noah Laba - Oliver Bjorkstrand
Eeli Tolvanen - Glenn Gawdin - Jaroslav Chmelar
Valdislav Gavrikov - Adam Fox
Marcus Pettersson - Braden Schneider
Matthew Robertson - Scott Morrow
Joonas Korpisalo
Dylan Garand
Rangers vs. Canucks: When, where, what time, how to watch
Who: New York Rangers vs. Vancouver Canucks
When: Friday, November 13 at 9 p.m. ET
Where: Rogers Arena
How to watch: MSGSN
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