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Heading into the playoff-push portion of the regular season, having a player like Barclay Goodrow around is going to pay dividends for the Rangers.
Not that the Rangers haven’t reaped the benefits of having a true utility forward in Goodrow this entire season — they certainly have. But for a young team comprised of many players who have little to no postseason experience, the reigning two-time Stanley Cup winner is going to be someone to look to.
Goodrow has seen his role change throughout his nine seasons in the NHL — from his time with the Sharks, the Lightning and now the Rangers. What hasn’t changed is Goodrow’s ability to effectively fulfill each job he’s tasked with.
After serving as the tenacious young presence on a veteran Sharks team, Goodrow proved to be one of the final pieces to the puzzle of a back-to-back Stanley Cup-winning Lightning team. And now, Goodrow is an alternate captain with more responsibility than he’s ever had in his first season with the Rangers.
“I’ve been working on my game,” Goodrow said after practice on Sunday. “I think I’ve kind of — I don’t want to say matured as a player, but, you know — I put more pressure on myself to contribute offensively. Obviously, I have a bigger role on this team than maybe previous teams that I’ve played on. It’s something I’ve wanted to contribute more than I have in the past.
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“I think my first half was pretty good, there’s still a lot more that I can add and contribute and more things I can do to help the team win going down the stretch.”
Skating in 44 of the Rangers’ 46 games so far this season, missing a pair due to a bout with COVID-19 in January, Goodrow has already scored a career-high 10 goals and is just five points away from a personal best. He’s already matched his 20 points from last season with Tampa Bay, dishing 10 assists to go along with his 10 tallies.
The Rangers have gotten a lot out of Goodrow since president/general manager Chris Drury acquired his signing rights from the Lightning and subsequently signed the 28-year-old to a hefty six-year, $21.850 million deal this past offseason. He’s played more top-six minutes than he has in his entire career, skating on the second line with Artemi Panarin and Ryan Strome on Tuesday against the Bruins.
But that might not even compare to how much Goodrow will influence the locker room in the final 35 games.
“Throughout the first half of the season, we’ve put ourselves in a great position,” he said. “I think we’ve done a lot better than what everyone may have thought we were going to do coming into the season. Looking at it from the inside, I think we’re where we think we deserve to be and how we thought of ourselves.
“I think the pressure that’s put on by maybe the outside world is not something that we think about. We’re hard on ourselves, we believe in ourselves to be the team that we’re capable of being. I think we put ourselves in a great position and we know we have a lot better hockey to play. We know the game is going to get a lot more difficult.
“But it’s the best time of year. It’s coming down the stretch when you’re battling for a playoff spot, you’re battling for rankings going into playoffs and you want to make sure your game is at its peak form. I think these are the most fun games to play in going down the stretch and we have a lot of young guys that are looking forward to it. They’re ready for it, so it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
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