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Ryan Lindgren has brought a lot to the Rangers’ back end during his tenure in New York, which technically began the day before the trade deadline four years ago when the Bruins packaged the defenseman with two draft picks and forwards Ryan Spooner and Matt Beleskey in exchange for Rick Nash.
Not only has he played top-pair minutes alongside reigning Norris Trophy winner Adam Fox for much of his career so far, but Lindgren has been reliable and a steady physical presence for the Rangers.
So when he and Fox came up a minus-four after drowning against the Blues last week, it was a lot more glaring than it should’ve been considering how consistent Lindgren has been.
“Obviously, that St. Louis game was a tough one,” Lindgren said after practice Wednesday at MSG Training Center. “But you’ve just got to remind yourself that it’s one game in an 82-game season. You’ve just got to make sure it doesn’t snowball and creep into the next game. I thought I did a good job of moving past that and having a good game in Dallas, another good game last night.
“You definitely want to be out there, want to be playing and when you have a game like that, you just got to move past it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Lindgren added that he and Fox talked about their rough night in St. Louis after the fact, noting that the two want to learn from that game but also have a short-term memory. Assistant coach Gord Murphy also chatted with Lindgren the next day, the Minnesota native said, in addition to going over video clips.
Murphy also reminded the 24-year-old of what makes him successful, such as being hard to play against and bringing an edge, which Lindgren said was encouraging.
“You have games like that,” said Lindgren, who lined up as the seventh defenseman during pregame warm-ups in Dallas but played his relatively usual minutes next to Fox. “You come away from it and your minus-four, but there are other games throughout the year where you never know what could happen. You get the save sometimes or whatever it might be. You just got to move on from it.”
Gerard Gallant went with 11 forwards and seven defensemen twice on the Rangers’ last road trip, which the Rangers coach said was to manage minutes for some of his D corps. He also alluded there was at least one player who was banged up.
Lindgren assured that he was physically feeling good, but acknowledged there are bumps and bruises along the way — or in his case, lots of cuts and gashes.
“When we go seven D, I don’t think I think about it too much,” he said. “When you get called upon to go out there, you just go out there and play. We’ve done it a couple times this year, I think [Murphy] does a great job with it and gets all out there.
“I certainly don’t mind doing it and I think we’ve done a good job when it has happened.”
The Rangers reassigned forward Morgan Barron to AHL Hartford.
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