Kevin Shattenkirk’s Rangers exile will be brief
Kevin Shattenkirk’s benching was set to last just one game, no matter what happened.
That was the message from Rangers coach David Quinn as he made the first boldfaced move of his tenure behind the bench, scratching Shattenkirk for what turned out to be the Rangers’ first win of the season, a 3-2 overtime victory against the Sharks on Thursday night at the Garden.
Quinn also said the 29-year-old Shattenkirk, who signed a four-year, $26.6 million deal in the summer of 2017, would be back in the lineup when the Oilers come to town on Saturday afternoon.
“He’s not fine with it; nobody’s ever fine with not playing,” Quinn said before he picked up his first win as a NHL head coach. “But if he were sitting in here with our conversations, this is not a, ‘Are you kidding me?’ type of conversation. We’ve talked through this. He’s going right back in on Saturday, and this is part of him getting back to where he needs to get back to.”
Shattenkirk had surgery on Jan. 18 to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee, and in his first three games under Quinn, he looked hesitant.
“I know everyone wants to make a big deal out of it, and I know it’s always a big deal when you don’t play a game,” Quinn said. “But I think under these circumstances, where a guy is coming off major knee surgery, he missed the second half of the whole year, he’s kind of finding his way, mentally more than anything. He’s fine physically, but he doesn’t have a lot of confidence from a skating perspective.”
Also coming out of the lineup was second-year defenseman Neal Pionk, who had seemed to be locked into a top-four role before a difficult game at Carolina on Sunday.
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“I think when you start 0-2, maybe in the Carolina game I was trying to do a little too much, trying to help the team out, maybe trying to overplay a puck or trying too hard without the puck, overpursuing to try to get the win when maybe sometimes less is more,” Pionk said.
Pinok, 23, was generally impressive in playing 28 games with the Rangers this past season, and he seemed to pick up right where he left off before the 8-5 loss to the Hurricanes. The lack of overall experience was also a reason that Quinn found it easy to scratch him.
“He’s played [31] games in the league,” Quinn said. “It’s not like he’s a 500-game player and has this big bank account.”
Those moves brought veteran left-shooting defenseman Fredrik Claesson in for his Rangers debut, a solid performance in 18:56 of ice time on a duo next to Brendan Smith.
“Every now and again, a guy is going to go in because we want to get him in there,” Quinn said about the depth on his back end, “and a guy that hasn’t been playing poorly is going to come out.”
Winger Cody McLeod was a scratch for the third time in the first four games.