[ad_1]
It is instructive that while the Rangers collectively believe they have prospered from last week’s three consecutive days of practice, so Filip Chytil believes that he has benefited personally from being sidelined for more than a week with the suspected concussion that he sustained in Calgary on Nov. 6.
“I think those eight or nine days, maybe I just needed a rest to think about the game,” said No. 72, who made a boffo return centering Alexis Lafreniere and Julien Gauthier in Tuesday night’s 3-2 victory over Montreal. “I didn’t lose contact with the team. I could study the game, I could watch the games, how it was going and what I could do better and what I could add to my game.
“On one side, I was not happy I could not play and that I was injured but on the other side I was positive and was happy I could study the game.”
The 10-3-3 Blueshirts will put their four-game winning streak on the line in Toronto on Thursday against an 11-5-1 Maple Leafs team that has also won four straight while taking nine of the last 10. This will represent a challenge but will not be measured as a be-all-end-all regardless of the outcome.
“I’m not going to gauge our team by one game; it’s an 82-game schedule,” head coach Gerard Gallant said before his team chartered north for the contest. “We’re playing well right now and I like the way we’ve played the last three games, especially. We’re piling up some wins, but we’re playing the right way.”
Chytil, who while just 22, is in his fourth full NHL season. And this represents a need-to-know season for the Rangers as pertains to the 21st-overall selection of the 2017 draft. This needs to be the year in which the Czech, whose young career has been dotted by false starts, takes a step forward.
Because if Chytil makes sufficient progress, then the Blueshirts would not only have the makings of a dangerous third unit this season but that could solve the looming 2022-23 riddle in the middle as relates to the second line, given Ryan Strome’s pending free-agent status.
“He’s been really good and really strong lately. That injury might have set him back, but [Tuesday night] he was around the puck, could have had two or three goals and Gauthier scored a real good goal on that line,” Gallant said. “I just think he’s a young player who has the potential to go higher.”
Chytil and Gauthier hounded the puck against Montreal. Lafreniere was involved in battles and the down-low game. And all three components took the puck to the net when they created the opportunity.
“[Tuesday], with that supposedly third line, as we call it, if they can play like that every night we’re going to have success,” said the coach. “Fil’s been good, he’s a big kid growing into his body. I like what I see.”
Chytil, 6-foot-2 and 206, has finesse skills but can also be categorized as a power center. He is forever working on his game. And though he is not a traditional dispatcher, 22 of his 31 career five-on-five assists have been primary ones.
“He’s so quiet; he doesn’t say much to me, but he knows Ciacc’ out there on the ice, he’s been around Ciacc’ a lot,” Gallant said, referring to skills coach Mark Ciaccio. “He’s one of those guys, you see him doing extra drills after practice, he’s always on the ice, he wants to get better and he wants to be a top-end center.
“We see that with our young guys. They’re all going to be top players whether it’s now or in the future.”
As the young guns develop and grow into primary roles, work without the puck and in the defensive zone are generally the disciplines in most need of attention. These are areas in which Chytil and his mates impressed against Montreal. That was the case on Gauthier’s third-period goal where his “reload,” according to Gallant, allowed the winger to strip Nick Suzuki of the puck before putting a whirling backhand into the net.
“It was about coming back and working hard,” the coach said. “You like to see when your team is working hard without the puck because you always work hard with the puck.
“It’s when you lose the puck, and I was especially impressed with some of the stuff we did [against Montreal], especially on that goal.”
[ad_2]