The New York Rangers were put to work through the team’s first day of training camp. Sean Avery Illustrates Rangers Perfect Shift Thursday marked the beginning of training camp for the Rangers and coach Peter Laviolette did not let any of his players off easy. The team participated in a number of physical and intense drills that got everybody’s competitive juices flowing. As expected for the first practice, there was a lot of conditioning and the drills were fast paced with players skating full speed throughout the entirety of the hour or so they were on the ice. This is just the way that Laviolette likes to operate. “Every team would like to think there’s a next step, but there’s not always a next step,” Laviolette said “That’s why I think it’s really important to focus on the growth of a team, the work you put in daily, and we were really good at that last year. But this is a new year and a new team and we need this group to focus on the work they need to put in daily.” There were laughs and smiles shared amongst the players at practice, but it was encouraging to see the Rangers go straight to hardcore training especially the way their season ended last year at the hands of the Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Final. Florida was just more physical as opposed to New York and the Rangers paid the price for it big time. Now though, it seems the Rangers are working on that aspect of their game and Laviolette is addressing it early on. Here were some of the offensive lines and defensive pairings featured at the start of training camp: Kreider-Zibanejad-Smith Panarin-Trocheck-Lafrenière Cuylle-Chytil-Kakko Vesey-Carrick-Brodzinski Lindgren-Fox Miller-Schneider Jones-Trouba
