The New York Rangers and the Winnipeg Jets meet in NHL action from the Canada Life Centre on Friday night.

The New York Rangers will look to build on their back-to-back wins to start the year after a 7-3 win over Minnesota last time out. Chris Kreider had a pair of goals in the win while Artemi Panarin had a team-high 4 points with 3 assists. Adam Fox, Vincent Trocheck, Kaapo Kakko and Fedor Chytil each had a goal in the win while Alexis Lafreniere and Mika Zibanejad had a pair of assists respectively. Igor Shesterkin got the win after stopping 33 of 36 shots faced in the winning effort.

The Winnipeg Jets will be out to rebound from a disappointing 2021-22 season, missing the playoffs for the first time since 2016-17 after going 39-32-11 last season. The bulk of Winnipeg’s core is still in tact, led by Kyle Connor, who had a team-high 93 points and 47 goals last season. Mark Scheifele added 70 points with 41 assists while Pierre-Luc Dubois and Blake Wheeler each had 60 points last year. Connor Hellebuyck retains the starting goaltender role after a down year by his own standards, going 29-27-10 with a 2.97 GAA and a .910 save percentage last season.

New York is 1-6 in their last 7 road games and 5-2 in their last 7 Friday games while the under is 6-1 in their last 7 games overall. Winnipeg is 7-21 in their last 28 games against the Metropolitan division and 2-9 in their last 11 Friday games while the over is 10-1-2 in their last 13 Friday games.

I get the reasoning for backing the Jets at home, but the Rangers have had little trouble in these compacted schedule spots going back some time now and I think Winnipeg might have a bit of a slow start to this one. New York is establishing themselves as one of the NHL’s best early on and I wasn’t overly enthused with what I saw from Winnipeg closing out last year. I’ll side with the Rangers in this one.