The NHL season will already be two days in when the Rangers take the ice in Buffalo on Thursday night.
Most teams will have started chipping away at an 82-game slate, where the parity in the league is as apparent ever.
The Eastern Conference, in particular, is somehow even more of a juggernaut than it was just a year ago.
Though head coach Peter Laviolette and the Rangers don’t expect everything to click right away as they continue to adjust to a new system, the start to the season cannot get away from them.
It may not be as strong of a takeoff as the club wants, but they’ll have to find ways to pick up points anyway if they hope to be in a comfortable playoff position later on.
“I’m hoping we’ll be better on Game 10 than we will be [Thursday night],” Laviolette said after the Rangers’ final preseason practice Wednesday. “I’m hoping that we’ll be better on Game 40 than we were on Game 10. And I think that’s just a natural progression of a team that is working to find success and become a top team in the National Hockey League. Or at least that’s what you would like to have happen. There’s still work to be done, it’s still a work in progress.
“I think a lot of things were put in place and just from my eyesight, the pace with which the players were able to do things and less awkwardness about doing it, I think eventually becomes habit and then translates on a daily basis.”
The Sabres are just one of the many teams in the East who are coming into the season with higher hopes than the last.
This could very well be the year Buffalo snaps a 12-season playoff drought.
That’s a type of hunger this Rangers team has never known, and can only hope to limit in its first game of the season.
Forward Tage Thompson is coming off a 94-point campaign that put him on the NHL map at 25 years old.
Defenseman Rasmus Dahlin is going to be riding high after signing a massive eight-year contract extension three days ago.
And Devon Levi is primed for his first full NHL season after an impressive seven-game sample size that saw the 21-year-old post a .905 save percentage.
The Sabres’ rookie goalie could even be in net Thursday, and the Rangers certainly have an interesting track record against young, inexperienced netminders.
“Every team starts with a 0-0 record, and every team has aspirations to make the playoffs and give themselves a chance,” Chris Kreider said. “I just think every team has so much skill. It doesn’t matter where they’re at in the standings by the end of the year, you got guys on every team who can break a game open and make some pretty incredible plays. I just think that’s kind of the direction the game has gone. Not that that wasn’t the case when I first got here, but I think it’s even more prevalent now.
“There’s just so much skill. Guys coming into the league now — everything they do so smoothly and at such a high rate of speed.”
Laviolette, who seems to revel in the competition, said he sees it as a positive how every game seems to be up for grabs nowadays.
There’s no such thing as an easy two points anymore, he said.
Every team has to fight every night to accomplish their ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup.
That’s only what Laviolette has been preaching since the moment he took the Rangers job in June.
The Rangers ended their final practice with a group embrace on top of their crest in the middle of the MSG Training Center ice.
It will always technically be the Rangers versus the other 31 NHL teams, but the “us against the world” mentality is something that has to be adopted.
The first of many battles begins Thursday night.
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