SALT LAKE CITY — The Rangers were without J.T. Miller on Saturday night against the Mammoth due to an upper-body injury.
“We’ll take it as it comes,” head coach Mike Sullivan said when asked if Miller will be out for more than one game. “Right now, he’s day to day. Tough guy to replace. He’s hard to play against. He makes an impact on the game, even when he doesn’t end up on the scoresheet. The other night, he ends up on the scoresheet, which is great for us and it’s good for him, obviously. But he’s not an easy guy to replace.”
Miller was sidelined toward the end of training camp, after the Rangers captain suffered a noncontact, lower-body injury while skating with the non-game group ahead of the club’s preseason matchup on Long Island on Sept. 29.
Despite missing the final two exhibition games and a few practices, Miller was in the Blueshirts Opening Night lineup and had appeared in all of their first 22 games.
Saturday’s game against Utah marked the first regular-season contest the 32-year-old has missed so far this season.
Asked if the injury was one he had been dealing with or a new injury from the Colorado game, Sullivan said it was the latter.
Miller got off to a slow start to the 2025-26 campaign, collecting just three goals and four assists through the first 12 games.
It prompted speculation that Miller still wasn’t 100 percent recovered from the lower-body injury he sustained in the preseason.
With three goals and four points in the past five games, however, Miller has steadily begun to contribute more offensively.
His two-goal effort against the Avalanche on Thursday night counted as his first multigoal performance of the season.
Without Miller, Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafrenière served as the Rangers first line.
The second unit featured Will Cuylle, Mika Zibanejad and Jonny Brodzinski.
Cuylle replaced Miller on the first power-play unit as well, joining Panarin, Trocheck, Zibanejad and Adam Fox.
That bumped Lafrenière to the second group next to Brodzinski, Conor Sheary, Taylor Raddysh and Scott Morrow.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
