On Monday, the New York Rangers received both some good and bad news. The good was that with their victory over the Columbus Blue Jackets, they had clinched a 2016 Stanley Cup Playoff berth. The bad, however, was that in the process, they lost captain and star defenseman Ryan McDonagh to a hand injury. And on Wednesday, the club officially announced that McDonagh suffered an “upper-body injury” and would miss the club’s remaining three regular season games, as well as the start of the first round (At least). The injury, which has been reported to be a fractured hand, occurred in-game against the Jackets when McDonagh blocked a shot from Brandon Dubinsky.
The news of McDonagh’s injury is terrible to the New York Rangers and their fans. McDonagh missed the majority of last year’s playoffs with a broken foot, and once again he is sidelined heading into post-season contention. There is some good news to all of this, and that is that McDonagh is not being listed as being injured long-term, but instead short term and is only projected to miss the first few games of the first round at most. That is all true of course, if he makes a clean, smooth, quick recovery. The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin in the middle of next week, giving the Rangers some time to monitor McDonagh and test his limits for playing.
Either way, the Rangers need him back as soon as possible. The past few weeks defensively have been rough on the Blueshirts, with goaltender Henrik Lundqvist facing some of the most shots he seen all year. Losing McDonagh would be dangerous, especially with a assumed first round match-up against the dangerous Pittsburgh Penguins. Ryan McDonagh finished the regular season with 9 goals, and 25 assists for a total of 34 points in 73 games played.
