New York Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan has opted to shake up his team's power-play unit, most notably demoting forward J.T. Miller. The move comes as the Rangers' power play has struggled, entering Monday ranked 18th in the NHL with a 20.0 percent success rate this season.
Sullivan explained the decision by referencing advice from his former Boston University coach, Jack Parker: "Start with what you deem the five best players and then go from there." Initially, the Rangers kept J.T. Miller, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Dorofeyev, and Alexis Lafrenière together on the top unit for much of the season. However, the team's offensive struggles on the man advantage prompted a change.
“I just think at this particular point in time, I could feel or sense an element of frustration just because the guys care deeply,” Sullivan said. “And so sometimes a little bit of change can bring a reset. Is this the long-term solution? I’m not sure. I don’t know the answer to that yet, but we’re gonna — we made this decision to split the groups.”
Miller, who has been a consistent presence on the top power-play unit since Sullivan took over, has recorded one goal and one assist with the man advantage this season. While he has generated six individual high-danger scoring chances, his individual expected goals number was the lowest among forwards on the initial top unit, according to Natural Stat Trick.
“We’ve been way below our standard, I think, so far,” Miller stated. “I even think when we were scoring goals earlier on, we were opportunistic. … At some point, you gotta do a little shake-up. … Typically when we do that, we get some juice, and try to go from there.”
Gabe Perreault has been brought into the first group, while Tye Kartye will replace Eeli Tolvanen on the second unit. Sullivan noted that Miller was included in the discussions about the changes and expressed that the players are eager to take ownership of their performance.
Historically, the power play has been a strength for the Rangers. Even in the previous season, they finished with the fifth-best power-play percentage in the league at 24.7 percent. However, after scoring power-play goals in five of their first seven games, they have only managed three goals in their last 21 opportunities (14.3 percent) since October 13.
In other team news, defenseman Sean Durzi (undisclosed) did not practice on Monday and is considered day-to-day. Goaltender Joonas Korpisalo participated in practice again, but his availability for an upcoming game remains uncertain. The Rangers also recalled Jaroslav Chmelar from AHL Hartford and assigned Taylor Raddysh to the Wolf Pack.