After dealing with plenty of bad injury news, the Rangers are set to soon get back Noah Laba, perhaps as early as Saturday in Boston.
The 22-year-old has been sidelined since suffering an upper-body injury on New Year’s Eve, but was a full participant in Friday’s practice in Tarrytown, skating alongside Gabe Perrault and Taylor Raddysh.
Laba has 12 points in his rookie season, with five goals, and coach Mike Sullivan said Friday the team would wait until they see how his body responds before making a decision on his status against the Bruins.
Sullivan said he’s been pleased with Laba’s first NHL season.
“I think he’s done a really good job,’’ the coach said. “He’s steadily improved his overall game, game to game, week to week [and] month to month.”
Even with the injury, Laba has appeared in 42 games, more than he did in any of his three seasons at Colorado College.
Laba said he feels good, and Sullivan said getting accustomed to the NHL schedule is not an easy task for young players.
“One of the biggest challenges coming from college, where guys are used to playing a 30- or 40-game schedule, is to go to 80- or 100-[game schedule],’’ Sullivan said. “It’s a significant difference. The intensity, the preparation and all the things that come into play with respect to that can be fatiguing in a lot of ways — not just physically. [Laba] has done a great job.”
His potential linemate, Perrault, also showed Sullivan he’s able to make adjustments at this level, as Sullivan noted Perrault “hung on to pucks more” in Thursday’s loss to Buffalo.
Vincent Trocheck acknowledged he and his teammates aren’t happy with their recent results, although he wasn’t willing to blame that for the unsportsmanlike penalty he took Thursday.
“Frustration is part of the game, especially when you’re not winning as much as you think you should or deserve to,’’ Trocheck said. “It’s on us to temper those frustrations and put them to good use.”
Asked if the penalty was the result of frustration stemming from the team’s poor play, Trocheck said, “That’s a question for my therapist, probably.”
Sullivan said he liked the idea of splitting up veteran defensemen Carson Soucy and Will Borgen in an effort to balance some of the team’s youth on defense, especially in the wake of Fox’s injury.
On Friday, Matthew Robertson saw time with Borgen — as did Urho Vaakanainen — while Soucy was paired with Scott Morrow and Vladislav Gavrikov was with Braden Schneider.
“The thought was to spread the young kids to veteran guys to help create a little balance,” Sullivan said of the decision. “We’ll take it game to game and watch and see how the performance is and how the pairs are working.”
Sullivan said Gavrikov has done “an admirable job” on the power play in the wake of Fox’s injury.
“The sample size is still small,’’ Sullivan said of Gavrikov, whose offensive game can be limited. “We’re gonna try it because we think he’s the best of the options we have. He can shoot the puck [and] has pretty good instincts.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
