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Rangers Radar: Chytil Heating Up in Hartford and Zac Jones’ NCAA Career is Off to an Epic Start

It’s time for another installment of Blueshirt Banter’s Rangers Radar, where we focus the spotlight on trends in performance, production, and collect notes on players in the New York Rangers organization. As was the case last year, we will include players on the New York Rangers, the Hartford Wolf Pack, as well as Rangers prospects playing elsewhere.

New York Rangers

  • Finnish rookie Kaapo Kakko recorded the first power play point — a secondary assist — of his NHL career on Oct. 22 against the Arizona Coyotes. Kakko now has two points in his first seven games and is averaging 14:34 TOI/GP./
  • Thanks to his two-goal game against the Coyotes, Tony DeAngelo now has three goals in his first seven games of the season. Last season, DeAngelo scored four goals in 61 games and didn’t score his third goal of the season until Jan. 15.
  • Through seven games this season, veteran Swedish winger Jesper Fast has four primary points at 5-on-5; last season, he had 11 primary points at 5-on-5 in 66 games.
  • Chris Kreider is still searching for his first goal of the 2019-20 season. At 5-on-5, he’s tied for third on the team in iSCF (9) and third in iHDCF (4). Through his first seven games last season, Kreider had four goals./

Hartford Wolf Pack

  • After failing to register a point in his first AHL game of the season, Czech prospect Filip Chytil has points in each of his last five games and is now up to eight points in six games. Chytil is currently Hartford’s leading scorer.
  • Russian goaltender Igor Shesterkin earned his first career AHL shutout with a 36-save performance against Springfield on Oct. 20. He now has a .952 save percentage in 180 minutes of AHL hockey.
  • AHL veteran Phil Di Giuseppe had goals in back-to-back games on Oct. 19 and Oct. 20 and has four points in his last five games. Di Giuseppe is averaging 3.67 SOG/GP with the Wolf Pack this season.
  • On Oct. 17 the Hartford Wolf Pack suspended Ryan Gropp when the former second round pick failed to report to the ECHL’s Maine Mariners. The Rangers have not yet terminated his contract. Gropp has played one game with the Wolf Pack this season; so too has Ville Meskanen.
  • The Wolf Pack have yet to be defeated in regulation through the first six games of the 2019-20 AHL season. /

Other Rangers Prospects

  • Defenseman Zac Jones (68th overall, 2019 Draft) has scored two goals and notched five assists — all primary — in his first four games at UMass. Only two of his seven points have come on the power play. Jones is currently the highest-scoring NHL-drafted defenseman in college hockey. /
  • RPI defenseman Simon Kjellberg (163rd overall, 2018 Draft) has two goals and two assists in three games to start his freshman season.
  • Michigan Wolverine forward Eric Ciccolini (205th overall, 2019 Draft) has three assists — all secondary — in his last two games. Ciccolini was the Rangers final pick of the 2019 Draft.
  • Center prospect Karl Henriksson (58th overall, 2019 Draft) is tied for the scoring lead in Sweden’s SuperElit league with five goals and 18 assists in 15 games. Henriksson has five more points than Frölunda’s second-highest scoring skater and he is currently leading the league in assists.
  • Defenseman Nils Lundkvist (28th overall, 2018 Draft) has two goals and six assists through his first 13 games of the season for Luleå HF. Lundkvist is tied for fifth among defenseman in the SHL in scoring despite the fact that he has just one point in his last six games. His 21:05 TOI/GP ranks second among Luleå defenders./

All data courtesy of naturalstattrick.com, hockeyeastonline.com, shl.se, EliteProspects.com, and theahl.com.

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