For an undrafted player scooped up off the waiver wire late last season, Tye Kartye continues to earn expanded opportunities and make an impact in all facets of the game for the Rangers.
The 25-year-old winger logged a career-high 20:06 of ice time and netted the go-ahead goal with 4:39 remaining in Thursday’s 3-2 win over the Flyers at the Garden.
“I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s a great kid, and he loves hockey,” Rangers coach Mike Sullivan said after the game. “He competes hard. He works at his game every day. He’s a relentless worker. He’s just a great teammate, I think.
“Ever since we picked him up and he joined our team, he’s just fit in with our group. I think he’s getting better and better. And he brings so many intangibles, he’s good on the penalty kill, his puck-pursuit game, he skates, he hunts pucks. And he’s conscientious defensively. He’s been a great fit for our group. I think he thrives in the game that we’re trying to play.”
Claimed off waivers from the Kraken on Feb. 27, Kartye has been a productive player for the Blueshirts with 10 goals and 26 points in 41 appearances — the equivalent of half an NHL campaign — including 5-7-12 numbers through the Rangers’ 9-7-1 start this season. He never totaled more than 22 points in his three-plus seasons with Seattle, where the Rangers will open a four-game road trip Saturday night.
“Just doing my job, honestly,” Kartye said Thursday night. “Everyone has a job to do out there, in every different situation, whether that’s five-on-five, power play or penalty kill.
“So when everyone knows what they’re doing and everyone is executing, it makes it a lot easier.”
The 6-foot Kartye, who signed with Seattle in 2022 after going undrafted out of junior hockey with Sault Ste. Marie of the Ontario Hockey League, has been playing lately on the left side of the Rangers’ No. 2 line alongside captain J.T. Miller and Gabe Perreault.
Kartye also has been a regular part of the forward rotation on the team’s penalty-kill unit, and he recently was promoted to the team’s second power-play group.
“I can’t say enough about him, he’s making contributions in a ton of different ways,” Miller said. “I feel like he made his way by being a good forechecker, and now he’s a heck of a hockey player, and he’s getting rewarded.”
To wit, the result has been more than 20 minutes of ice time in each of the past two games — marking the first two times Kartye has played that much in his NHL career.
“It’s more just the flow of games,” Sullivan added. “We said to ourselves that this guy five-on-five is one of our leading scorers, so it would probably make sense to try him on a power play. So we’ve started to use him there, and he’s part of our penalty kill, and he’s playing on the top six.
“We’ve had this conversation that sometimes that adds up to 20-plus minutes. What I like about Tye is he’s got a real good motor. He recovers well. I think just my experience of coaching him here for the time that I’ve had him, he’s a guy that can handle minutes with the way he plays. I don’t know that we want to get into a circumstance where he’s playing 20-plus night after night after night. But on the odd occasion if he gets up in that range, I think because of his motor, he can handle it.”
Sullivan also believes that Kartye’s hard-nosed style makes him a strong complementary fit on a two-way line alongside Miller, slotting in behind the skilled top unit of Mika Zibanejad between Pavel Dorofeyev and Alexis Lafrenière.
“They have some chemistry, and I know they like playing with each other,” Sullivan said. “Tye brings a speed element and just gets in on the forecheck and creates turnovers, loose pucks, that allow the line to get in on top of the puck and then they play from there.
“But I think J.T.’s game down low, underneath the hash marks, at the net front, just his puck-possession game, he’s a handful for anybody. They play a lot of times against the other team’s top players, and more often than not they’re controlling play.”
