The NHL is going to make a go of this restarting the season thing, opening training camps for the 24 teams returning to play on Monday, with the games set to resume Aug.1. And no team in the entire league could be more excited about that than the Rangers.
When play was halted March 12, the young, and still-rebuilding Rangers were in the thick of a playoff race, their 3-2 overtime loss to the Colorado Avalanche in Denver the night before having pulled them to within two points of a playoff spot with 12 games to go. Now, under the league’s restart plan that will have the 12 returning Eastern Conference teams play games in an empty arena in Toronto, the Rangers find themselves preparing to play a best-of-five qualifying series against the Carolina Hurricanes, with the winner advancing to the 16-team playoffs that will (fingers crossed) produce a Stanley Cup champion sometime in early October.