Will Cuylle, quite simply, had never skated at center.
Not during his four-plus seasons with the Rangers. Not during his 87 games with AHL Hartford. Not during his three years with the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires or during his youth hockey days with the Toronto Marlboros, either.
“Never seen my number in the middle before,” Cuylle said.
But that changed Monday, when the Rangers practiced ahead of their home match against the Blues. There was Cuylle, on the third line between Eeli Tolvanen and Oliver Bjorkstrand, as head coach Mike Sullivan put his lines in a blender and the Blueshirts’ lack of center depth was on display once again.
Cuylle said he’s comfortable taking faceoffs, and he has won 53.8 percent of them this year. He has occasionally been stuck as the low forward too, and executed center responsibilities on the fly.
This tweak, though, would be different, with the Rangers center experiment reaching the point where even wingers are plausible options.
“Will has a lot of the qualities and the attributes that I think would allow him to be effective at that position,” Sullivan said. “He can skate. He has good size. He can lean on people down low. He takes faceoffs regularly. … And so we felt this time we’d try to effect a little bit of change to see if we can create a little bit more momentum for our group.”
The Rangers’ lack of centers has been well documented dating back to training camp, when they only kept four on the initial roster. Joe Veleno’s injury during the fourth game prompted the ineffective recalls of Cole Beaudoin and Justin Dowling and then the signing of veteran Luke Glendening. And at the top of their lineup, the Blueshirts have relied on Mika Zibanejad and J.T. Miller as their centers for the first two units.
But buried beneath some of their other woes this season have been the struggles of Noah Laba, who played his way into a roster spot at training camp last year. He’s only 23 and has flashed plenty of potential, but Sullivan referred to his 2026-27 as a “mixed bag.” Laba hasn’t scored and has collected just four points, while his expected goals for percentage (34.03) ranked fourth worst among the 17 Blueshirts forwards who’ve skated in a game this season, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Unlike last year, when the Rangers had J.T. Miller, Mika Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck all crammed into their top six most of the time, they don’t possess any natural centers skating on the wing, either. Sullivan and his staff discussed contingency plans and felt that Cuylle, if needed, would be capable of shifting to center, though Sullivan acknowledged that nothing is permanent and “we could flip it back in one shift if we wanted to.”
“Just trust your instincts, I guess,” Cuylle said of Sullivan’s message to him. “I like to think I’m pretty responsible defensively, so I think that’s like the biggest difference just in the D-zone. … I have a good idea of what to do. I think it’s just actually going out there and applying it will be the challenge for me.”
To Cuylle, the only changes will come with the faceoff and those defensive zone responsibilities. The Rangers, who will bring a four-game skid with them to the Garden on Tuesday, have struggled with “killing plays” in the defensive zone, Cuylle said, and he could help with that while playing lower and functioning, essentially, as a third defenseman.
Even with the position change, Cuylle said he doesn’t want to stray from his game. He still wants to be physical — and he entered play Monday seventh in the league with 62 hits. He still wants to be responsible in the defensive zone. He has flashed some offensive potential this season following consecutive 20-goal campaigns too, with four goals, four assists and the third-most expected goals on the Rangers (5.2) behind Pavel Dorofeyev and Alexis Lafrenière, according to MoneyPuck.
And now, after how the Rangers looked at practice, a new position could become the latest wrinkle for Cuylle, too.
“I think he’s excited about the opportunity,” Sullivan said. “He thinks he can be good at it, and I tend to agree with him.”
