The New York Rangers begin their preseason tonight against the Boston Bruins. A clash of the Original Sixers at the start of the Blueshirts’ preseason will give the organization a great start to their hoped-for championship season. Preseason results are only important for pride, so we’re looking for the positives to take from this performance. A win would be nice because it has a lot of meaning off the ice and outside of the roster, but it’s meaningless for the standings.

We’re looking for impressive rookies, solid starts for roster players and good performance from deep. The big star for the Rangers tonight will be Filip Chytil. Chytil missed most of last year’s season due to concussions, but returned to help the Rangers in their playoff push as they attempted to reach the Stanley Cup Final. He’ll look to prove his health isn’t an issue this season.

We’ll see, for the first time, a Rangers goalie who isn’t being coached by guru Benoit Allaire. Allaire has stepped away from his day-to-day duties as the team’s goalie coach, but is still involved in the broader spectrum of things and could step in if something goes wrong with certain goalies. Regardless, it will be interesting to see the difference in performance without the best goalie coach of all time.

We also take a look at the coaching staff as Peter Laviolette’s team enters his second year behind the scenes in New York. Building on a monumental season last year with success at nearly every turn, the Rangers know they can enter a situation with flying confidence if they can win this battle of the two most recent Presidents Trophy winners in the NHL regular season. None of that matters to anything else, so let’s enjoy some Rangers hockey.