Rangers move Will Cuylle to center, J.T. Miller to PP2

Monday's practice came after a weekend of tinkering, and it was the biggest shake-up yet. Here's how the forwards lined up.

Vince Z. Mercogliano

@vzmercogliano

Interesting look today for the #NYR forwards: Dorofeyev - Zibanejad - Lafrenière Kartye - Miller - Perreault Tolvanen - Cuylle - Bjorkstrand Raddysh - Laba - Rempe Glendening looks like the extra.

Cuylle is in the middle between Tolvanen and Bjorkstrand. Laba drops to the 4th line with Raddysh and Rempe, and Glendening looks like the extra. Gabe Perreault is on Miller's wing after getting bumped off the Zibanejad-Lafrenière line only a few days ago, when Dorofeyev took his top-line spot. It's a lot of moving parts for a team that's supposed to be settling in by November.

Then the power play got flipped. PP1 is now Fox, Zibanejad, Dorofeyev, Lafrenière and Perreault. Miller, who opened camp as the top unit's bumper, drops to PP2 with Gavrikov, Bjorkstrand, Kartye and Cuylle. Moving your captain to the second unit isn't something a coach does for fun.

After practice Sullivan explained the Cuylle move, and he didn't pretend this was some long-planned idea. He even joked that a camp question about who his emergency center would be got the ball rolling. Cuylle was his answer back then, and here we are.

Mollie Walker

@MollieeWalkerr

#NYR head coach Mike Sullivan on trying Will Cuylle at center, a position the 24-year-old has never played in his life: "I just feel like where we're at, we need to affect a little bit of change. Will has a lot of qualities or the attributes that I think would allow him to be effective at that position. He can skate, he has good size, he can lean on people down low. He takes faceoffs regularly, on the penalty kill but also on the line he's been on. Him being the left and Labs being the righty. He's good in the faceoff circle."

Sullivan also stressed it's an experiment. Nothing is "etched in stone," he said, and they could flip it back in 1 shift. The case for it is reasonable: Cuylle is big, he skates, he already takes draws on the penalty kill, and having a lefty and a righty down the middle helps in the circle. Cuylle said Sullivan told him to trust his instincts, and that the D zone is where he expects the real adjustment.

The flip side is Laba, and the numbers explain why he's the one moving down.

Vince Z. Mercogliano

@vzmercogliano

Noah Laba has 0 goals and 4 assists through 15 games with a 35.9% xGF, and now looks like he's being dropped to 4C. Sullivan called his season to this point "a mixed bag." "He's had moments when he's been very effective for us. I think there's been other moments where it's been a little bit of a struggle for him. I guess the biggest point of contention would just be consistency. ... When you look at the overall production of our lines, look at underlying analytics, things of that nature, we just felt as a staff that maybe we could affect a little bit of change there." #NYR

0 goals in 15 games with a 35.9% xGF isn't going to hold a 3C job on a team that wants to contend, even if Sullivan was careful to say Laba is "a good player" and they lean on him a lot. "Mixed bag" is coach-speak for not good enough lately.

As for the power play, Sullivan said he sat down with the old top unit before making the change. He said he could sense frustration with the results and that they'd been patient with that group for a long time. He also said Miller was "great about it." The captain didn't push back. He made the same case himself.

Mollie Walker

@MollieeWalkerr

Captain J.T. Miller on what #NYR hope to get out of power play changes: “Just some juice. We’ve been way below our standard, I think, so far. I even think when we were scoring goals earlier on we were opportunistic… At some point, you’ve got to do a little shakeup. Typically when we do that, we get some juice and try to go from there.”

That's an honest read from Miller. Saying the unit was "opportunistic" even when it was scoring is basically admitting the goals were hiding some ugly power plays. Now the question is whether Perreault gives PP1 the spark it hasn't had, whether a Miller-led PP2 can actually threaten instead of just killing 40 seconds, and whether Cuylle can handle a 200-foot center job he's never done. Sullivan says they'll talk it over before deciding whether it sticks, so the next game-day lines will show whether this is real or just a practice-day experiment.