The season debut for Dylan McIlrath started rather well on Tuesday night at the Garden, ringing a shot off the crossbar on his first shift just 1:40 into the game.
But during a contest that was riddled with penalties, coach Alain Vigneault only got the 6-foot-5 defenseman on the ice for 12:20, and an evaluation was hard to come by after the Rangers fell to the Jets, 4-1, snapping their season-opening three-game winning streak.
“He didn’t play a lot of minutes because of the specialty teams,” Vigneault said. “For the most part, he played all right.”
There was another evaluation from Marc Staal, who has seen how hard McIlrath has worked this preseason to give himself a chance to stick around.