The Rangers are already staring at a complicated path forward, and Dylan Garand’s stretch in the NHL has become one of the few things making that picture look a little brighter.
Igor Shesterkin’s injury knocked out New York’s star goaltender for the rest of the season, and Joonas Korpisalo’s more minor issue opened the door even wider for Garand. The young goalie has been given the longest NHL run of his career, and he has generally made the most of it, even if his play has tailed off lately.
That matters because Garand’s rise could turn into a real asset for a team that burned through a chunk of draft capital over the summer. The Athletic’s Vince Z.
Mercogliano wrote that the Rangers might look to cash in on Garand next summer if he “puts together a solid season and teams come calling about a trade.” Mercogliano also drew a line to New York’s 2015 situation, when Cam Talbot had emerged as a future No. 1 behind Henrik Lundqvist before the Rangers dealt him for a draft-pick package led by a second and third-rounder.
Elsewhere in the Metropolitan Division, Philadelphia’s frustration spilled out after a 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals. Flyers captain Sean Couturier was blunt in his postgame comments, calling the team “soft,” and saying they “definitely need to pick up [their] physicality.” The Flyers are now 3-8-4, and head coach Rick Tocchet has already been taking heat for the slow start.
The Rangers’ center situation is another part of the story, and it is not nearly as stable as it looked not long ago. In January 2025, the club acquired J.T.
Miller from the Vancouver Canucks after he scored 103 points the previous season, giving New York a high-end center to go with Mika Zibanejad. But Miller and Zibanejad are both 33 now, and Mercogliano wrote that he “can’t shake the feeling that the Rangers are going to be stuck in no man’s land until they add a play driver at the top of the lineup.”
If the Rangers do go hunting for that true No. 1 center, the market could be brutal. New York already moved a lot of draft assets over the summer to bring in Pavel Dorofeyev and Marcus Pettersson, which only makes the search for another top-line difference-maker that much harder.
In Other News...
Flyers Keep Sliding As Injuries And Sloppy Play Wreck Any Momentum
The Flyers trip to Washington brought another familiar mix of frustration and unfinished business, with injuries continuing to thin the lineup and the losses piling up around them. Sean Couturier and Matvei Michkov found the net in a 5-2 defeat at Capital One Arena, but the Capitals controlled the flow for most of the night and the Flyers never managed to turn a few good moments into sustained pressure.
It was the kind of game that has become all too recognizable for a club trying to find traction without Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett and Rasmus Ristolainen. Philadelphia has now lost 12 of its first 15 games, and even when the attack flashes enough to keep things interesting, the bigger issues keep showing up in the same places: turnovers, gaps in coverage and a lack of timely responses when the game starts to tilt away. [Read more 🡒]
Michkovs Scoring Surge Is Giving The Flyers A Huge New Question
Matvei Michkov has quickly become one of the Flyers most productive scorers, sitting second on the team in points while leading the club with eight goals. A lot of that damage has come from his ability to find quiet space on the weak side of the net, where he has turned into a dangerous finishing option on the power play and around the crease. The setup has given Philadelphia a legitimate new weapon in its offense, and it has also made Michkov a central piece of how the team wants to attack.
What makes the surge even more interesting is how deliberate it has been. Michkov has clearly worked to add that weak-side instinct to his game, and the results have been showing up in real time as the Flyers keep leaning on him in scoring situations. The bigger question now is how far that skill can carry him and whether the rest of the league starts to adjust to the spot where he keeps doing his best work. [Read more 🡒]
Flyers Already Face An Ugly Question About This Core
The early stretch has already forced an uncomfortable conversation around the Flyers, because the problems are showing up in too many places at once. They have been slow out of the gate, loose defensively and short on the kind of offense needed to survive a long season, and coach Rick Tocchet has not tried to hide it. Sean Couturier and Nick Seeler also acknowledged the issues after Wednesdays game, which tells you how plainly this is being viewed inside the room.
Danny Briere is the one left staring at the bigger-picture question if this slide keeps going. At some point, the Flyers may have to decide whether this core needs a jolt through personnel or a more drastic shakeup behind the bench, because the current mix is not masking the flaws. For a team that wants to climb out of the leagues middle, the uncomfortable part is not just that things are going poorly now, but that the list of possible fixes is already getting shorter. [Read more 🡒]