Artemi Panarin, Jimmy Vesey questionable for battle vs. Devils
Artemi Panarin and Jimmy Vesey missed practice Wednesday and are day-to-day with lower-body injuries, but Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette didn’t provide much clarity about their statuses for Thursday’s game against the Devils.
“We’ll see [Thursday],” Laviolette said. “Right now, they’re day-to-day.”
That means the Rangers — and their forward group that already lost Blake Wheeler, for at least the regular season, and Filip Chytil — will enter the Battle of the Hudson’s latest edition with a pair of questions involving their top two lines.
Vesey, who shifted from the fourth unit to the first line after Wheeler’s lower-body injury Feb. 15, skated 14:05 and took 20 shifts in the Rangers’ win against the Stars on Tuesday, while Panarin — who appeared in all 82 games in 2022-23, hasn’t missed a game this year and sits tied for fifth in the NHL with 75 points — logged 19:55 of ice time and assisted on Adam Fox’s first-period goal.
Panarin and Vesey scored two goals apiece when the Rangers defeated the Devils on Nov. 18 in the first rematch of their 2023 playoff series.
The teams will meet two more times before the regular season ends, too, with the Rangers holding the Metropolitan Division’s top spot with 77 points and the Devils — at 60 points — trying to claw toward a wild-card berth.
This year, the Devils have been defined by inconsistencies.
They haven’t produced a four-game winning streak, and they’ve strung together three consecutive wins just four times.
Akira Schmid’s postseason spark has been extinguished, and goaltenders Vitek Vanecek and Nico Daws have struggled for most of the season.
Star Jack Hughes just returned following the All-Star break after missing a month with an upper-body injury.
At this point, 10 months removed from their disappointing exit, the Rangers-Devils matchup doesn’t carry any lingering reminder of the postseason result, defenseman Ryan Lindgren told The Post.
Maybe at the start of the season, he said, but they’re different teams in new seasons.
There have been nearly 60 games since those playoff matchups.
Still, those rivalry games seem “like they are a little more heated,” Lindgren said. That was the case for the Blueshirts’ Stadium Series win against the Islanders last weekend.
And it’ll likely be the case again at Prudential Center on Thursday.
“Those games are always intense,” Mika Zibanejad said.
Laviolette said that he exchanged some texts with Wheeler and spoke with him once since the forward sustained the injury that’ll keep him out for at least the remainder of the regular season.
“He’s doing as well as he could be,” Laviolette said. “I’m sure he’d rather be on the ice and playing games. … Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the beast here.”
Fox has compiled seven points across the last three games and nine across the last five after his first-period goal Tuesday.
He’s also strung together 35 points in 36 games since returning from the lower-body absence that sidelined him for nearly a month.
“He’s a guy that puts up points,” Lindgren told The Post. “He defends well. So yeah, he’s playing really good right now, but I think he’s been really good all year.”