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It didn’t take long for Alberts Smits to provide a glimpse of what Mike Sullivan had hinted at. 

Late in the first period Thursday, less than a minute before the Devils goal that began the Rangers’ unraveling at Prudential Center, Smits slammed his stick on the ice four times from the left circle. As play cycled behind the net, Smits knew he had an open shooting lane. Alexis Lafrenière slid the puck over. And Smits, the No. 5 pick in June’s draft, sent a shot toward the net around traffic that Nico Daws turned aside. 

So much of Smits’ acclimation to the NHL, as a rookie who skated on the third pair from the first day of training camp and never looked back, has revolved around the defensive layers. But the Rangers also think he has “an offensive dimension to his game that might be untapped,” Sullivan said. 

There have been flashes through 10 games, even as Smits has yet to log a point — and, entering Monday’s game against the Ducks, remains the last Blueshirts regular without one. But the Rangers, who remain impressed with how he has performed with inevitable growing pains and mistakes mixed in, think that part of his game will eventually emerge too. 

“I think the offense is gonna come,” Smits said Thursday. “Just gotta take care of the defense first. So that’s what I’m focusing on right now.” 

Smits, who recorded a pair of assists with Latvia across four games at the Winter Olympics while stringing together six goals and 13 points in 38 games with Finland’s Jukurit last year, picked up his first unofficial point in the preseason — sending a nifty pass toward the slot that Taylor Raddysh deflected into the net. Sullivan has continually raved about Smits’ passing and physical poise, about how he doesn’t look like an 18-year-old on the ice, and that served as a tangible example in a game setting. 

The Rangers have waited for the first instance of that in the regular season. They entered play Sunday with 20 points — two goals and 18 assists — from defensemen this season, tied for the eighth most in the NHL, according to StatMuse, but have gotten 19 of those from their top four and the 20th via an assist from Braden Schneider. There hasn’t necessarily been a drop-off with Smits, though. Smits rank second on the Blueshirts in expected goals per 60 minutes (0.22) behind just Adam Fox this season, per MoneyPuck, and when Smits was on the ice Saturday, the Rangers carried an expected goals for percentage of 82.94, which marked the highest rate on the team, according to Natural Stat Trick. The Blueshirts also had a team-best expected goals against number (0.25) during Smits’ shifts in the team’s 1-0 overtime loss in Columbus too. 

Smits was on the ice for the Blue Jackets’ winning goal at 4-on-4 in overtime — unable to disrupt a pass fully in the neutral zone and unable to get his stick on two others in the Blueshirts end before Kent Johnson’s winner — and only logged five shifts after the second period. 

Part of the ice time issue, Sullivan said, stemmed from the Rangers being on the power play three times in the final frame. He has yet to carve out a role on either special teams unit, limiting his availability, and Smits skated just 14:46 — the lowest number among Rangers defenseman by over four minutes — in Columbus. 

“That’s [assistant coach David Quinn’s] call back there,” Sullivan said of Smits’ limited shifts in the third. “He’s running the defense.” 

The sentiment echoed by the Rangers since the start of training camp hasn’t strayed from Smits looking like he belongs. Sullivan reiterated that again Thursday, labeling miscues as “mistakes of enthusiasm.” 

Smits, when asked about evaluating his game so far, said Thursday that he has continued to try and get better each game, to stay on the right development track. The Rangers have given him the runway for that, opting for Smits’ upside over more experienced left-handed defensemen such as Matthew Robertson or Urho Vaakanainen. They embraced the potential for growing pains and learning curves that’d inevitably follow. 

“The biggest challenge [for young defensemen] is the reads,” Sullivan said. “When to be aggressive. When to cut your losses, stay inside the dots, manage the dots, let the play come to you a little bit. That’s the hardest part, I think, of playing defense in this league, and that’s, I think, Smitty’s challenge moving forward. But we love his aggression.” 

The defensive play, for the most part, has transferred to the regular season. The offense, for now at least, remains a work in progress from a production standpoint, with Sullivan believing that the Rangers — over time — could unlock more.

Marcus Pettersson knows Mike Sullivan’s structure and philosophy better than most with the Rangers, since the defenseman spent parts of seven seasons with the Penguins from December 2018 through February 2025 after Sullivan had already arrived and won a pair of Stanley Cups in Pittsburgh.

And in the early portion of this season, Pettersson has noticed this iteration of the Rangers starting to adopt a similar identity to what those Penguins teams had with Sullivan as head coach, he told The Post before a 1-0 loss to the Blue Jackets in overtime where the Blueshirts largely flashed the same principles of checking and forechecking while earning their 13th point of the young season.

“[Identity is] always the word on people’s mouths, I feel like, early in the year where it’s — some teams find it early, some teams are searching for that identity,” Pettersson, who was acquired in exchange for a top-10 protected first-round pick in the 2030 draft, said Saturday. “I think when you look throughout our lineup, our system and everything, I think everybody’s really bought in so far this season. … We’re a really good checking team. I feel like, and if we can do that well, it’s gonna be tough to beat us every night.”

With five years remaining on his contract, Pettersson, 30, will likely be part of shaping the Rangers blue line into the future, and outside of a pair of giveaways in Saturday’s game, he’s mostly been impressive with Sean Durzi on a revamped second pairing. Pettersson has collected a pair of assists offensively too while settling into a critical role on the Blueshirts penalty-kill unit.

His current group of Rangers teammates, who are now 6-3-1 through their opening 10 games, and his former Penguins teams contained different types of players, he said, but there are still some similarities in how they play. They both had centers who could read the game. They both had speed. They both paired that with checking that in turn has allowed the Blueshirts to create opportunities for their most dynamic players.

They’ve learned how Sullivan wants to play away from the puck, Pettersson said, and have witnessed how that ultimately creates offense. Defensively, he added, both teams understood what puck movement means too.

“It doesn’t mean that you’re highlight reel, doing spin-o-rama, wheeling outside the zone every shift,” Pettersson said. “It’s effective puck moving where you get the pucks to our game-breakers up there.”

The power play was supposed to be a definitive strength of the Rangers this season, but instead, through their opening 10 games, their other special teams unit has emerged as one of the league’s best — and that, given their reliance on 24-year-old goaltender Dylan Garand with Igor Shesterkin out for the season, has been crucial.

In their 1-0 loss to the Blue Jackets on Saturday, the Rangers killed all three of their penalties, including one by Will Cuylle at the end of regulation that forced them to operate at 4-on-3 for the first 1:27 of overtime.

They entered play Sunday with a unit that has killed all but two of their 31 penalties, hasn’t allowed a goal on the road and sat in a tie for the second-best success rate in the NHL at 93.5 percent — which is even with the Hurricanes and trails just the Maple Leafs’ 96.4 percent.

“They’ve been aggressive,” Sullivan said. “There’s been a lot of collective effort when they are aggressive. It’s cooperative pressure. … They’re doing a lot of the little things, the thankless jobs. They’re winning faceoffs, they’re getting clears, they’re blocking shots, but they’re making good reads.”

Last week, the Buffalo Sabres traded defenseman Ryan Johnson to the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for blueliners Caleb Jones and Daniel Laatsch. 

Now, after one week on Pittsburgh's NHL roster, he is heading back to the AHL. This is because the Penguins have announced that they have assigned Johnson to the AHL's Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. 

While Johnson was on the Penguins' NHL roster before this demotion, he has not made his debut for Pittsburgh. Instead, he was scratched while on Pittsburgh's roster. Now, with him being sent down to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, he will get back into game action. 

Johnson appeared in four AHL games with the Rochester Americans this season before being traded to the Penguins. This was after he had five goals and 19 points in 56 games with Rochester this past season. 

Johnson was selected by the Sabres in the first round of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft, 31st overall. In 47 games over three seasons with Buffalo from 2023-24 to 2025-26, he posted seven assists and a plus-1 rating. 

The Montreal Canadiens defeated the Buffalo Sabres in overtime by a 5-4 final score in their most recent game on Saturday. 

Canadiens forward Zachary Bolduc contributed in Montreal's win, as he scored a power-play goal at the 11:45 mark of the first period to tie the game up at 1-1. 

With this goal, Bolduc now has four goals to go along with six points in eight games so far this season with the Canadiens. He is also on a hot streak right now, as he has recorded a point in each of his last three games.

With the way Bolduc is playing right now, he is showing clear signs of being ready to break out for the Canadiens. The young forward putting up strong offensive numbers like this at the start of the season is very encouraging. Now, he will be aiming to keep it from here for Montreal.

If Bolduc can continue to chip in offensively while making an impact with his physicality, it would be huge for the Canadiens. At just 23 years old, there is reason to believe that he has not hit his full ceiling yet. Due to this, he will be a very interesting player to keep watching as the season carries on. 

It’s not breaking news that Ondrej Palat struggled when he got to Long Island last season. And it was understandable to assume, at age 35, that this season wouldn’t be much different for a player who had taken a step back during his tenure as a New Jersey Devil.

The Islanders’ win Saturday night over the Maple Leafs, though, was the latest and most emphatic piece of evidence that no such thing is happening.

Palat had arguably his best game as an Islander in the 4-1 victory, despite not making it onto the scoresheet. The Islanders were up ice on nearly every one of his shifts. He won battles and played nearly perfectly on breakouts and in his own end. In his 13:01 of ice time, the Islanders out-attempted Toronto by an absurd 19-1 margin, per Natural Stat Trick’s count.

“He’s been great all year,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “I think he’s come back with something to prove. I think from training camp, he’s been engaged and ready. He wants more. If anything it’s on me to give him a little bit more than what he’s even got so far. He’s been that good.”

Of course, the opportunity for more minutes may become something like a necessity. Palat has been on the Islanders fourth line for six of eight games, but would be an obvious candidate to move up in the lineup should Calum Ritchie or Matias Maccelli miss time with lower-body injuries sustained Saturday night.

While he’s unlikely to fill the Islanders’ scoring gaps, Palat’s two-way play and forechecking make him a positive force.

“We all knew he had game left in him,” Kyle Palmieri told The Post. “I think he just came into camp with a clear mind and was ready to go. It’s awesome to see.”

Palmieri, who was rehabbing an injury when Palat was dealt to the Islanders last season, noticed at the start of camp that he was in “great shape” — something Palat has credited to changes in his offseason routine, while declining to get into specifics.

“I know what kind of an impact play he can make. I watched firsthand what he was like in Tampa. Saw his years in Jersey. I thought he’s a guy you always see on the ice, you always notice,” Palmieri said. “I think the impact he’s making this year is a really positive thing for our group. Hopefully he continues to be that.”