Banter Preview: Rangers vs Devils

Well, here we go again.

Tonight at Madison Square Garden, it’s the New York Rangers hosting the New Jersey Devils. The Devils, unfortunately, are the top team in the Metropolitan Division if not the entire conference and the Rangers are — well, they aren’t that. They’re definitely not that.

When the Devils aren’t skating around pools of Miller Lite from cans their fans have thrown on the ice, they’re winning hockey games. A lot of hockey games. It’s actually getting a little out of hand and it needs to be stopped. Please, someone, just make it stop.

• Devils Record: 18-4-0
• Devils Last 10 Games: 9-1-0
• Devils with 24 or more points: Jesper Bratt (25), Jack Hughes (25), Nico Hischier
• NHL teams with satanic imagery in their identity: 1/

At the moment, it’s not exactly a hoot to be a Rangers fan. It seems like this team is finding ways to lose games and continues to put out results that are altogether unsatisfactory. The Blueshirts are coming off of a pretty much unforgivable 4-3 loss to the Edmonton Oilers wherein they blew a 3-0 lead by allowing four goals in the third period. It was a bad time — a bad time that felt eerily like a microcosm of a lot of the Rangers’ shortcomings this season.

Leon pic.twitter.com/ZlDw1lDAoe

— Smooth Oil (@SmoothOil) November 27, 2022

The Rangers need a response to that performance tonight. They need to do all those things we hear coaches talk about before they bite the cap off a dry-erase marker and draw a flurry of arrows that somehow all point in the same direction: a win. The Devils are one of the best even-strength teams in the league so that is what I’ll be watching tonight. I want to see how Gerard Gallant counters all the things that have made New Jersey so successful and look for the Rangers to find scoring chances outside of the power play.

The puck drops at 7 p.m. at MSG tonight. After tonight’s game, these teams will be back at MSG on Dec. 12 before playing the last two games of the season series in Newark (Jan. 7, Mar. 30).