Rangers drop Pavel Dorofeyev to the bottom six

The night in Ottawa started badly for Dorofeyev, and early on it was his own stick that did it.

Mollie Walker

@MollieeWalkerr

Pavel Dorofeyev is called for high sticking to negate #NYR power play... Pretty rough start for the visitors.

A high-sticking call that wipes out your own team's power play is the sort of thing a coach remembers. Mike Sullivan doesn't give anybody much rope, and by the middle of the night the lineup had changed.

Mollie Walker

@MollieeWalkerr

Oliver Bjorkstrand replaces Pavel Dorofeyev on #NYR second line with J.T. Miller and Tye Kartye.

That's a straight swap of the 2 wingers. Going into the game, Bjorkstrand was the one on the 4th line, with Dorofeyev on the right side of Kartye and Miller. Bjorkstrand had already been demoted once this season after starting on the second line with Miller, and now he's back up while the guy the Rangers built their summer around goes down.

Remember what this guy cost. The Rangers sent Vegas the 26th pick in the 2026 draft, a 3rd-rounder and a conditional 2028 1st for Dorofeyev at the draft, then signed him to a 7-year, $77 million deal at $11 million a year. He was coming off career highs of 37 goals and 64 points in 82 games with the Golden Knights. When you pay that, you aren't paying for a bottom-six winger.

Vince Z. Mercogliano

@vzmercogliano

This is also pretty interesting. We’re 13 games into the season, and even though a lot of Dorofeyev’s underlying numbers look pretty good, #NYR’s big offseason addition has already been dropped to the bottom six.

Peter Baugh

@Peter_Baugh

Dorofeyev is with Laba and Cuylle. Bjorkstrand assisted that last Miller goal.

That's the part that makes this weird. The puck hasn't gone in, with 1 goal and 2 assists through his first 7 games, but everything around the scoring has looked fine. At that point he led the team with 24 shots and sat in the 97th percentile in high-danger chances. Sullivan had already moved him up to the top line with Mika Zibanejad and Gabriel Perreault to get him going, then took him off the top power-play unit and said he was "fighting it a little bit."

So this isn't really about the process stats. It's a coach deciding results count more than expected goals, even for an $11 million player in October. You can call it accountability or you can call it overreacting to a guy who's getting chances and just not finishing. Either way, 13 games is fast.

Next to watch: whether this was a one-period shove or a real change for the next game. If Dorofeyev is back next to Miller right away, it was a message. If he stays down with the bottom-six group for a week, that $77 million contract gets a lot of attention in New York.