Peter Laviolette put his lines in a blender again Monday night, and buried in the Rangers head coach’s overhaul was the return to a fourth line that’d previously been successful in creating chances.
With Matt Rempe returning for the 5-1 loss to the Lightning, Laviolette paired him with Jonny Brodzinski and Brennan Othmann — their ninth game on the same line — and watched them produce an expected goals for (0.45) on par with the second line (0.47), according to Natural Stat Trick.
“Well, it had [worked] in games past, too, so we went back to that as well,” Laviolette said Monday following their loss. “We knew we were gonna get some mileage out of the lineup tonight, but based on the opponent and like I said their first line, even players on their second line, we wanted to make sure that we had some pieces in place that could play against those players.
“And so I think that, and a combination of Brodzinski, Rempe and Othmann had played well together in the past.”
The trio nearly produced a goal just minutes into the game, with Othmann chasing down his rebound after the Lightning blocked an initial attempt and sending a tight-angle shot toward Andrei Vasilevskiy that hit the post.
Then, after the puck veered toward the corner, Rempe escaped from a cluster with possession — and enough of a window to fire another shot that Vasilevskiy saved.
Othmann spent time with the Rangers top six recently, but Laviolette dropped the 22-year-old and 19-year-old Gabe Perreault — who signed his entry-level deal March 31 and made his debut days later — to the bottom six, placing Perreault alongside Sam Carrick and Chris Kreider, as he tried to find a counter to the Lightning’s powerful forward groups at the top of their lineup.
When that paired with Rempe returning for the first time since March 25, it allowed the productive fourth line to get pieced together again.
It might be fleeting, with the Rangers desperately needing to win out — and get help — to even have a chance at erasing what entered Tuesday night as a six-point gap in the wild-card standings.
The lines could look completely different again and again over their final five regular-season games.
But the trio produced three goals in their first eight games together. Brodzinski is in the middle of a career-best season with 10 goals.
Rempe has shown offensive strides this season, too, as he looks to become more than just an enforcer, while Othmann represents a jolt of youth who could be a consistent member of the Rangers top six in future seasons.
And that all meshed together to nearly create another tally shortly after they were reunited.
Mika Zibanejad’s power-play goal Monday night — which also snapped a 2-for-44 drought for the unit dating back to March 3 — moved him into a tie with Rod Gilbert for third most (108) in Rangers history.
The Flyers, who the Rangers host Wednesday at the Garden, have won three of four games since firing ex-Blueshirts head coach John Tortorella on March 27.
Before that, they’d lost six in a row and 11 of 12. Philadelphia sits tied with the Bruins for the fewest points in the Eastern Conference entering Tuesday’s games.
