The two video games captured it all for Will Cuylle. They served as a microcosm for the selection of roles he can fill — and thrive in — for the Rangers, and showcased the influence he can make, even if a path to the high six isn’t as clear as it was at the begin of last 12 months.
There Cuylle was last Sunday, sending the Mammoth’s Dylan Guenther into the boards and stepping up to battle when Jack McBain challenged him later on. And there the left winger was one week later, in the Blueshirts’ 6-2 win over the Canucks on Sunday at the Garden, recording the fifth multi-goal sport of his profession with his first tallies of the season. It gave him 5 factors through seven video games, an early tempo that’d enable him to shatter his profession best of 45 from 2023-24 and a blueprint to make that occur.
His pair of objectives — which gave the Rangers 5 victories in seven video games coming into Tuesday’s home match against the Lightning — also marked a first emergence of his scoring contact in his fifth season that could help carry his ceiling beyond the 20 objectives from each of the last two years. They were just the second and third objectives for his line at 5-on-5 play this season, a promising development for a third line tasked with relieving the stress, both offensively and defensively, for the Rangers high six.
“I mean, I thought [Sunday] was good for our line,” Cuylle said postgame Sunday. “I thought for the most part we were down in their end. I think we’ve been kinda building our game all year. Results haven’t always come, but analytically getting a lot of chances, a lot of Grade A chances. So it’s only a matter of time before they start going in.”
Cuylle’s first purpose unfolded in the early minutes of the second period, when Noah Laba despatched a cross to him in the impartial zone. Cuylle weaved around Linus Karlsson close to the blue line and flicked a shot into the Canucks web. Then, with under 5 minutes remaining in the third, Cuylle crashed the web while on the rush and deposited an Eeli Tolvanen rebound previous Canucks goalie Kevin Lankinen.
But close to the finish of 2025-26, Cuylle didn’t mince phrases when speaking about his sport. He had a “higher expectation” for himself transferring ahead, he instructed The Post’s Mollie Walker in March. He admitted that he had good stretches and poor stretches. Cuylle’s physicality and manufacturing had blended collectively at occasions all through the 12 months, permitting him to hit the 20-goal threshold again, but it still left him realizing he could add more.
The 24-year-old opened coaching camp on a line with Laba at middle and Tolvanen, and it’s the only line that head coach Mike Sullivan has left intact to this level. Sunday marked the group’s best expected objectives quantity for the season — 0.58, which led the Rangers ahead mixtures — and their best expected objectives for share (65.63) since the home opener, according to Natural Stat Trick. In between, there were early low factors, such as when they had a 9.99 expected objectives for share in the Mammoth sport and a 6.25 clip against the Red Wings, but that line, Sullivan said lately, is “a responsible line” that has crammed the position the Rangers are wanting for.
Cuylle’s particular person manufacturing, too, has been at the middle of that. He has at least one level in 5 of the Blueshirts’ seven video games this season. He leads the Rangers with 26 hits — Tye Kartye has the second most with 17 — and sat third in the NHL coming into play Monday after ending third and fourth for hits leaguewide the previous two years.
And if Sunday’s efficiency becomes a method that Cuylle can keep replicating across an 84-game marathon, if his line can deal with defensive-zone attracts and constantly produce objectives, it’ll only help Cuylle proceed to reset his Rangers ceiling.
“I think Will, that’s an important element of Will’s game — the physicality that he brings,” Sullivan said after the Mammoth sport, when Cuylle fought for the twelfth time in his NHL profession. “He’s such a great athlete. He skates so well. He finishes checks. He’s hard on pucks. When he plays that way, he’s hard to play against. He certainly makes us a better team.”
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