The Rangers’ uneven stretch has opened the door to a bigger question on the blue line: how much more can they ask of Alberts Smits right now?
New York has started the season better than it did a year ago, but the recent slide has put some of the early optimism under a brighter spotlight. The Rangers are 7-6-1 through 14 games, and after losing three straight and five of their last six, the pressure to tinker is starting to build. The injury to Igor Shesterkin has only made the stretch tougher.
That’s part of why the club began adjusting its defensive pairs in the loss to the Los Angeles Kings. The bottom two pairings were flipped, with Smits moving alongside Sean Durzi and Marcus Pettersson skating with Braden Schneider.
For a team that still wants to compete this season, the changes make sense. But this is also the first year of the Rangers’ retool, and the bigger picture matters here too. New York was never going to enter the year as a full-blown Stanley Cup contender after the offseason moves it made, so development has to be part of the equation.
Smits is right at the center of that. The fifth overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft is one of the organization’s most important young pieces, and the Rangers are clearly high on what he can become.
He made the team without much trouble, but so far he’s mostly been used on the third pair with Schneider. There has also been plenty of discussion around Schneider’s place in the lineup and what his future in New York looks like.
What Smits needs now is the kind of usage that helps him grow without burying him. He’s averaging just under 15 minutes per game and still hasn’t recorded a point, which is the lowest offensive output among the team’s defensemen. A bump into a second-pair role could give him more responsibility and a better developmental runway.
The Rangers don’t want to overload him, but they also can’t keep him in neutral forever. Durzi is established as a reliable second-pair defenseman, and pairing him with Smits gives New York a logical way to challenge its top young blueliner while keeping the structure intact.
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