GREENBURGH, N.Y. — The New York Rangers still don’t have a timeline for Adam Fox, who was placed on long-term injured reserve Sunday with an upper-body injury he sustained in the third period of a 4-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday.
Fox is required to miss at least 10 games and 24 days on LTIR. He is tied for the Rangers’ lead with 26 points (three goals, 23 assists), which ranks second in the NHL among defensemen.
New York (13-12-2) hosts the Dallas Stars at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday (7 p.m. ET; Victory+, MSG 2).
“Obviously, ‘Foxy’ is not an easy guy to replace for so many reasons,” Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said after practice Monday. “I’m sure I’m stating the obvious when I say that, but we’re going to put a game plan together based on the people that we have to try to set our group up for success.”
Fox is also a candidate to play for the United States at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 in February. It’s not yet clear if this injury will impact his status for Team USA, which will be coached by Sullivan.
To replace Fox, Braden Schneider will move to the top defense pair and take his spot as the right-handed shot next to Vladislav Gavrikov.
New York’s first power-play unit will feature five forwards. Artemi Panarin will move to the point, where Fox typically plays.
Sullivan said the Rangers will have to be conscientious on the power play with Panarin at the point of the five-forward unit that also includes Mika Zibanejad, Vincent Trocheck, J.T. Miller and Will Cuylle. He stressed that they’ve been talking about attacking from below the face-off dots on the power play all season and that it needs to be a focus without Fox as the defensive conscious up top.
“I’ll try to play safer up top, but I also can’t be too conservative because it probably won’t work like that,” Panarin said. “The NHL is not an easy league. You’ve got to take a risk sometimes.”
Panarin, who is tied with Fox for the team lead with 26 points, is the choice to replace Fox as the point on the power play because of their similar ability to see the ice and distribute.
“The two obvious guys would be him and Mika probably,” Sullivan said. “Mika can really shoot it. I think ‘Bread’ sees it really well. He’s also really good at getting pucks through. His ability to get pucks down to the net into the areas of the rink we want to get them is a particular attribute that he’s good at.”
Schneider’s even-strength ice time should also increase with the move into Fox’s role next to Gavrikov. Schneider plays 15:58 per game at even strength. Fox plays 20:03, which is second on the team behind Gavrikov’s 20:34.
“It [stinks] seeing Adam go down. You don’t want that to happen because he’s been so good this year, but, yeah, it’s an opportunity to step up and see if I can put the big boy pants on and do a job for us,” Schneider said. “I’ll do my best to play fast, play hard and play the game that I know how to play, and hopefully we can get some wins.”
Rangers forward Adam Edstrom left practice early Monday and is day to day because of a lower-body injury. Brennan Othmann was recalled from Hartford of the American Hockey League.
New York was also without forward Taylor Raddysh, who missed practice for personal reasons.
“I think we’ve just got to really dig into our team identity and to our individual identities,” Schneider said. “Obviously, we’re not going to fill that hole [left by Fox]. He’s one of the best offensive defensemen in the League, and it’s a hard position to fill, but we can make sure we’re doing our jobs to the best of our abilities, and that’s breaking pucks out, that’s defending hard, that’s getting the puck into our forward’s hands and seeing what we can do to get shots through.
“I think if we can do that and just make sure that we’re really digging in and being stalwart defensively, those offensive things will come for us. But you’re not going to fill that hole.”