The Kids are coming to St. Louis.
Rookies Gabe Perreault and Brennan Othmann were recalled from AHL Hartford on Wednesday and will presumably be in the lineup Thursday night against the Blues, after the Rangers hit a new low on the season following their seventh shutout loss in their 35th game.
In desperate need of a scoring jolt, the Blueshirts are turning to two of their key prospects to help provide it.
Perreault has had a reasonable case for another look for almost a month now.
Othmann is finally starting to score after a slow start to the season, which also included hearing his name in trade chatter.
At this point, the Rangers had nothing to lose.
They’ve lost three games to three different teams sitting in last place. Their 2.51 goals-per-game average is ranked 30th in the NHL. They woke up Wednesday morning and boarded the team plane to St. Louis as the second-to-last-place team in the Metropolitan Division.
The halfway point of the 2025-26 campaign is steadily approaching. This is what the Rangers are.
“We’re not bearing down and the other teams are,” captain J.T. Miller said after the Rangers suffered their league-leading 10th loss on home ice. “We’re kind of stuck. Win three, lose a couple. We are where we are. It’s frustrating.”
Perreault got a run of three games on the top line with Miller and Mika Zibanejad in November, but the 20-year-old didn’t exactly seize it with one assist and two shots on goal. Leading up to that recall, Perreault had registered a four-game goal streak as part of eight total points over that span.
The No. 23 pick in the 2023 draft has since posted five goals and seven points in his last 11 games for a struggling Wolf Pack team.
Just 10 days after Sportsnet first reported that Othmann was available and drawing interest, the Rangers put the 22-year-old in the lineup Oct. 26 in Calgary. It was a listless performance from the team as a whole, but Othmann had a particularly rough outing that parked him in the press box for the remainder of the road trip before he was promptly returned to the minors at its conclusion.
Othmann’s first goal of the season didn’t come until Nov. 26, but he has scored three times in his last four games for Hartford.
A future in New York grows less and less likely as each opportunity passes Othmann by. Thursday would count as Othmann’s 27th game with the Rangers and the supposed-to-be sharpshooter is still searching for his first NHL goal.
His inability to showcase his game at the NHL level will only make it more difficult for the Rangers to trade him.
If it’s goals the Rangers need, Perreault and Othmann should be the top two prospects who can provide them.
In a corresponding move, the Rangers returned Brett Berard and Jaroslav Chmelar to Hartford.
After bursting onto the scene earlier this season, Chmelar skated in his sixth game with the Rangers on Tuesday night. Now that Matt Rempe is back from his broken thumb, the team needs more offensive prowess than a fourth-line presence.
Berard, who was a healthy scratch Tuesday night against the Canucks, posted zero points in an 11-game run on the wing of the third line.
“He brings energy,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of Berard. “He’s a gritty player. He’s a north-south guy. He can really skate. He’s good on the puck pursuit game, but he brings a lot of energy.”
