{"id":209286,"date":"2026-04-25T05:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/209286\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T05:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T05:48:09","slug":"vladislav-gavrikov-became-the-blueprint-for-mike-sullivans-rangers-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/209286\/","title":{"rendered":"Vladislav Gavrikov became the blueprint for Mike Sullivan&#8217;s Rangers defense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lack of offense was at the root of the <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/17\/sports\/mike-sullivan-sees-two-areas-of-need-where-rangers-can-improve\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Rangers\u2019 issues this season<\/a>, but defensively, first-year head coach Mike Sullivan implemented a puck pursuit-heavy system designed to support one another as a five-man unit.<\/p>\n<p>Compared to last season, in which they were consistently burned on defensive breakdowns and odd-man rushes against, the Blueshirts showed flashes of the stingy defense Sullivan has in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When Igor Shesterkin was asked about the defensive improvements in front of him, however, the star Rangers goalie pointed to one player.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe got Gavi,\u201d he said with a smirk, referring to 2025 offseason <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/03\/sports\/rangers-vladislav-gavrikov-finding-a-different-dimension-to-his-game\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">free agent signing Vladislav Gavrikov<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lack of offense was at the root of the Rangers\u2019 issues this season, but defensively, first-year head&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[540,20564,9,24,55,54,541,539,56,319,428],"class_list":["post-209286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-adam-fox","tag-mike-sullivan-nhl","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-ny","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}