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Artemi Panarin returned to practice with the Rangers on Friday after nursing a lower-body injury over the past week.
Having skated on his own the previous few days, the star Russian wing sported a red non-contact jersey during the Blueshirts’ first session while playing on a line with Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafrenière.
Despite the red jersey, the Rangers said Panarin has been cleared to give and receive contact.
“In a perfect world, we’d like to get him into a game or two,” head coach Mike Sullivan said after practice Friday at MSG Training Center. “But a lot of it is going to depend on where he is. Certainly, we’ll err on the side of caution.”
The Rangers pulled Panarin from team practice and kept him out of the first three exhibition games for what sounded like cautionary reasons.
It is unclear when Panarin, who has led the Rangers in points every season since he signed as a free agent in 2019-20, will make his preseason debut.
Sullivan said he likes to see his established players get into at least three exhibition matches.
With only three left, however, it sounds like the 33-year-old will only play in however many he is comfortable with.
Justin Dowling, who has also been dealing with a lower-body injury, skated only with a coach earlier Friday.
Aside from Vladislav Gavrikov and Adam Fox, the defense pairs have largely rotated through the start of training camp between Will Borgen, Braden Schneider, Urho Vaakanainen, Carson Soucy and Scott Morrow.
Asked if he was leaning toward pairings with history — like Borgen and Soucy from their time in Seattle and Schneider and Vaakanainen from last season in New York — Sullivan sounded like a coach who is still gathering intel.
“I wouldn’t say it doesn’t matter,” Sullivan said. “Obviously, if there’s chemistry amongst groups, we try to take advantage of that. And then the other aspect of it is, we’ve got to make decisions with lefty-righty combinations or righty-righty combinations. … It all depends on what we explore here moving forward and what we see in the types of combinations that potentially we could put together that will give us balance.
“But, also, from a matchup standpoint, give us an opportunity to put pairs together that we think help us in that capacity. Our intention is to explore some options and just watch and see what we have and then try to make decisions accordingly.”
The Rangers skated in those aforementioned pairs Friday in practice, with Morrow lining up alongside Matthew Robertson.
While skating with the Hartford group Friday, Gabe Perreault and Brennan Othmann flanked the 6-foot-7 Dylan Roobroeck.
