Rangers forward Taylor Raddysh will miss the next two games while he attends the funeral for his father, Dwayne, according to The Post’s Mollie Walker.
Dwayne, who died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer, was 64 years old.
Raddysh, who has skated in 59 games during his first season with the Rangers, opened up to Walker in December about his father’s diagnosis — Dwayne was given four to six months to live in May — and said “he’s meant everything to me and my brother.” Darren, Raddysh’s brother, is a Lightning defenseman who spent parts of three seasons with AHL Hartford earlier in his career.
“He’s led us to where we are today,” Raddysh told Walker in December. “Never really played hockey, played normal sports as a kid, but he just loved hockey. Kind of let us see where it took us and we fell in love with it. He worked a 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. job every day and drove us to hockey until 9 o’clock at night. So he was gone every day and just both boys, two schedules that were completely different. Him and my mom have done it all. It hasn’t been easy.”
After the win over the Maple Leafs on Tuesday, Adam Fox presented Raddysh — who assisted on a power-play goal in the second period — with the Broadway Hat in the locker room after what the Blueshirts defenseman described as a “rough couple of days” for Raddysh.
“Obviously the last couple days have not been easy for me and my family,” Raddysh told the Rangers after receiving the hat in a video posted to X by the team, “but just want to thank you guys for all the help over the last couple days and I know my dad’s proud of that one tonight.”
In the aftermath of the loss to the Devils on Saturday, head coach Mike Sullivan spent most of his news conference with reporters bemoaning the play of their special teams.
The Blueshirts penalty kill allowed New Jersey to score three power-play goals, and they now have the 21st-ranked unit this season at 78 percent.
They also failed to convert on any of their four opportunities with the man advantage.
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“I thought we lost a lot of juice with our special teams — both the power play and the penalty kill,” Sullivan said. “The power play was slow, deliberate. We refused to shoot the puck. We wanted to pass it in the net, and our penalty kill didn’t get the job done. They gained a ton of momentum from both their penalty kill and their power play. ”
“… A big part of the game is momentum, and we didn’t get any juice from our special teams today. For me, that was the difference.”
The Rangers recalled forward Brendan Brisson from the Wolf Pack. … Tye Kartye, claimed off waivers last month, assisted on Vladislav Gavrikov’s goal Saturday for his first point as a Blueshirt. … Aidan Thompson, the 24-year-old forward acquired from the Blackhawks last week in exchange for AHL defenseman Derrick Pouliot, collected a pair of assists during his Wolf Pack debut Saturday.
