Off a faceoff play the Rangers believed should’ve been blown dead, Vladislav Gavrikov was beaten by Cole Caufield for the Canadiens’ game-winning goal Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.
It was a skillful move from a young star in the midst of a career season.
It was a posterizing moment for the Rangers defenseman.
Most of Gavrikov’s first season with the Blueshirts has been much more assuring than the aforementioned sequence. He’s exactly the type of defenseman the Rangers wanted as Adam Fox’s partner, valuing defense first and playing a reliable game on a nightly basis.
The fact that the 30-year-old more than doubled his previous career high in goals and is on pace to set a personal points record has just been an added bonus.
“I just think we’ve discovered a different dimension to his game,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of Gavrikov, who has 14 goals and 18 assists in 76 games entering the matchup with the Red Wings on Saturday afternoon. “Vladi’s core competency is his ability to defend. He’s hard to play against and that was what attracted us to him in the first place. The other element is, with respect to his defensive game, there’s some predictability around his game. So we thought he’d be a really good partner for Foxy, which has turned out he has been. You never really know if that’s going to be the case. You try to think things through and figure out who might have complementary skill sets, and try to make some predictions on who you think might work.
“We do with line combinations, we do with defense pairs. Sometimes they make a whole lot of sense on paper, but they don’t actually work out, for whatever reason. This one, in our estimation, has worked out. We think that pair has been excellent … I just think he has a dimension that we’ve discovered that has helped us on the offensive side. But we don’t want him to become a different player than he already is. We want him to defend well. That, for me, is the foundation of his game, and that’s what he excels at.
“When he defends hard for us and adds the offensive dimension to his game, he’s even more effective as far as helping us win. I think he’s had a terrific year for us. He’s a real competitive guy. He’s been a great pair for Foxy, and he’s helped us on both sides of the puck.”
The underlying numbers of the Gavrikov-Fox pairing indicate they are one of the Rangers’ few success stories this season.
Despite playing significantly fewer games together — due to Fox’s missing 27 contests with injuries — they have still logged a team-high 783:21 of five-on-five minutes in 2025-26 so far. While the gap in games should be considered, Gavrikov and Fox still rank highly among the NHL’s other top defensive pairs.
Among 27 defensive pairings with at least 700 five-on-five minutes, their 57.74 expected goals percentage is the fourth best behind only the Lightning’s Darren Raddysh-Janis Moser (60.15), the Hurricanes’ Sean Walker-K’Andre Miller (58.18) and the Avalanche’s Brent Burns-Josh Manson (58.07), per Natural Stat Trick.
Gavrikov and Fox also own the third-lowest expected goals against at 28.49. Only the Senators’ Jake Sanderson-Artem Zub (27.87) and the Golden Knights’ Brayden McNabb-Shea Theodore (25.62) own a lower xGA.
“I think the offensive side of it speaks for itself,” Sullivan said of his top D pair after an optional practice Friday. “I think when they’re committed to defending — and they’re both very capable in that aspect of the game. I think Vlad is elite defending when he’s committed to defend. And Foxy, I think his ability to defend flies under the radar because everybody looks at the offensive side of this game. But we believe that Foxy is very capable of defending. He’s hockey strong in the puck battles. He uses his brain and his stick skills to win pucks, and he’s competitive.
“I think when those guys are at their best, they’re committed to defend. Their offense always seems to speak for itself. Those are the conversations that we have with them a lot, just reinvesting in that commitment to play defense. And when they do that, they’re a very effective defense pair. They’re excellent.
“That was our hope when we signed Vladi, that we could find a partner for Foxy that would be complementary, that could hopefully set up Foxy for success. And I think that has actually turned out to be the case, that they’ve become a very good pair on both sides of the puck.”