Rangers captain J.T. Miller remains out with injury

As the New York Rangers attempt to spark a push up the Eastern Conference standings on Monday during their game against the St. Louis Blues, they’ll need to do so without the on-ice help of captain J.T. Miller. Newsday’s Colin Stephenson reported that Miller remains out with an upper-body injury on a day-to-day timeline. While the injury appears highly unlikely to keep Miller out of action for very long, it is a discouraging development nonetheless in what has been a troubling start to the season for both Miller and the Rangers as a whole. 

The Rangers traded two promising young players in Filip Chytil and Victor Mancini, as well as a first-round pick, to the Vancouver Canucks to acquire Miller, and at the time, the move seemed easily defensible as Miller had very recently scored 37 goals and 103 points. Centers capable of that level of production are very rarely made available, and since the Rangers already had a cornerstone defenseman (Adam Fox) and franchise goalie (Igor Shesterkin), paying that price to add a true number-one center was seen as a “win” for the team.

But since Miller has arrived in New York, he’s only been able to match the level of play he set in Vancouver on a sporadic basis. Miller scored a solid 35 points in 32 games last season, but the Rangers failed to reach the playoffs. So far this year, Miller has struggled to produce as consistently and has just 12 points in 22 games. That’s a 45-point 82-game pace. For a player making $8M against the cap with the clear expectation to be a leading scorer on a playoff team, that’s simply not enough production for the Rangers to get where they want to go as a team. 

While this injury will sideline Miller for a short while, it won’t rob him of his chance to turn around his season whenever he recovers and returns to the ice. For the Rangers to restore their status as true Stanley Cup contenders, a status they lived up to by reaching two Eastern Conference Finals in three seasons, they’ll need Miller healthy and firing on all cylinders.