Rangers vs. Oilers: Lineups, storylines trying to avoid season series sweep
The New York Rangers would love to close out a whacky first month of the 2025-26 NHL season on a winning note when they visit the Edmonton Oilers on Thursday.
A victory at Rogers Place would mean the Rangers (4-5-2) finish their October schedule at NHL-.500. That’s not nothing, considering the Rangers are winless at home (0-4-1) and somehow the second-lowest scoring team in the League (2.18 goals per game), despite quite often badly outplaying the opposition.
Throw into the mix that they’ve played most of the month without indispensable center Vincent Trocheck, who’s on IR and misses his 10th game Thursday with an upper-body injury, and, yeah, you can say that the Rangers can feel good about where they are — all things considered.
Of course, a loss to the Oilers (5-4-2) creates more of a negative spin. The focus then could be on eight losses (including overtime defeats) in 12 October games, only two wins in their past nine, and a team-wide scoring funk that threatens to sabotage their season.
That’s the fine line the Rangers straddle. However, they are coming off a 2-0 win in Vancouver against the Canucks on Tuesday, when their defensive structure and commitment was admirable, and the scoring chances were weighted heavily in their favor.
True, they needed a Sam Carrick empty-net goal late before they could breath easily, since they failed to capitalize on numerous Grade-A opportunities to widen their lead earlier. But this still should be a winning recipe for them on most nights.
It wasn’t a winning formula earlier this month against the Oilers, though. Back on Oct. 14 at Madison Square Garden, the Rangers completely shut down Oilers superstars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, and had a significant 15-3 edge in high-danger scoring chances, per Natural Stat Trick. Yet, the Rangers lost 2-0, when Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner finished off a magnificent night with 30 saves.
Two things come to mind off this example. One, to make this stout defense the bedrock of a consistent winning formula, the Rangers need to, you know, actually score goals at the other end of the rink. Two, taking McDavid and Draisaitl out of the game twice in the same month feels unlikely.
That makes it even more imperative that the Rangers find the back of the net a few times Thursday. And it’s not a big ask considering that the Oilers have allowed 17 goals in their past five games, even if they are 3-1-1 in that stretch. Overall, the Oilers are 17th in the League, allowing 3.09 goals per game.
The Rangers can’t afford to regress defensively against the Oilers, as they did when surrendering 11 goals to the San Jose Sharks and Calgary Flames in consecutive games before tightening things up again against the Canucks. After a slow start offensively this season, the Oilers scored six goals twice in their past four games, including a 6-3 win over the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday.
3 storylines when Rangers visit Oilers
1. Slow starters
The Rangers are notorious for starting slowly in too many of their 11 games to date. Brutal starts cost them against inferior — on paper — opposition, when they lost to the Sharks and Flames recently. But they were dominant early on against the Canucks, even if the scoreboard only read 1-0 in their favor at the first intermission, and carried that through to an important win.
So far this season, the Rangers have been outscored 10-7 and outshot 103-85 in the first period, and stand 1-4-2 when the opposition scores first. The Rangers are outshooting opponents by 65 shots in the second and third periods combined, though they’ve scored just three more goals in that span.
Similarly, the Oilers have scored only five first-period goals in 12 games (and allowed six). They, too, turn it on in the second and third periods, scoring 22 goals and taking 40 more shots combined.
If one of these teams cracks the code and starts quickly Thursday, that could be a deciding factor in the ultimate outcome.
2. Alexis Lafreniere’s mixed bag
Alexis Lafreniere has one goal in 11 games this season, despite a ton of great scoring opportunities. The glass-half-full outlook is that the 24-year-old forward is doing so many good things in the offensive zone to generate prime looks and is simply snakebit when it comes to finishing. The glass-half-empty view is that if Lafreniere isn’t scoring goals, he’s net-negative for the Rangers because his defensive play hasn’t been good at all (going beyond a team-worst minus-9 rating).
Coach Mike Sullivan told reporters it’s a “mixed bag” when it comes to Lafreniere and his season to date.
Simply, averaging 18+ minutes TOI in a consistent top-six role, and getting more time than he ever has on the top power-play unit, Lafreniere must start finishing, no matter how good his underlying metrics are. The Rangers aren’t scoring nearly enough anyway, so it can’t be acceptable that one of their best offensive players continually shoots blanks.
Perhaps facing the Oilers will get him going. Lafreniere has four goals and seven points in nine career games against them.
3. Streaking Oilers
Draisaiitl led the NHL with 52 goals last season, and he’s picking up the pace in this one with three goals in his past two games and five during a six-game point streak (nine points). The 30-year-old is one goal behind Jack Hughes, Nathan MacKinnon, Cole Caufield, and Pavel Dorofeyev for the League lead.
McDavid had just one goal in the first 10 games, but scored twice to help the Oilers rally past the Mammoth at home Tuesday. He has a team-high 14 points, and recorded at least one in nine of 11 games so far this season. McDavid is also four points shy of 1,100 in the NHL.
Edmonton defenseman Evan Bouchard (seven points; one goal, six assists) and forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins (six points; one goal, five assists) each is on a five-game point streak.
New York Rangers projected lineup
Artemi Panarin — Mika Zibanejad — Will Cuylle
Conor Sheary — J.T. Miller– Alexis Lafreniere
Juuso Parssinen — Noah Laba– Taylor Raddysh
Adam Edstrom — Sam Carrick — Jonny Brodzinski
Vladislav Gavrikov — Adam Fox
Carson Soucy — Will Borgen
Urho Vaakanainen — Braden Schneider
Igor Shesterkin
Jonathan Quick
Rangers vs. Oilers: When, where, what time, how to watch
Who: New York Rangers vs. Edmonton Oilers
When: Thursday Oct. 30 at 9 p.m. ET
Where: Rogers Place
How to watch: MSG
More About: New York Rangers News
