Rangers sitting Artemi Panarin for foreseeable future as retool moves ahead

The Rangers’ pending sell-off is really about to take off now.Two days after making their first retooling trade of the regular season, the Rangers held leading scorer Artemi Panarin out of Wednesday’s road game against the Islanders for “roster management,” The Post’s Mollie Walker reported about an hour before puck drop.The star winger will not play in the team’s final four games before the NHL’s upcoming break next week forGM Chris Drury already had stated in a Jan.

16 letter to fans that the 34-year-old Panarin — a pending unrestricted free agent after his seven-year, $81 million deal signed as a free agent in 2019 expires this summer — would not be re-signed by the organization after extension talks went nowhere.More deals are likely to follow ahead of the March 6 trade deadline, with the Rangers entering Wednesday’s game with the worst record in the Eastern Conference.But NHL rosters will be frozen from Feb.

4 through the entire 27-day Olympic break.Drury has already made one trade this week, sending veteran defenseman Carson Soucy to the Islanders for a 2026 third-round pick, meaning his first two games with his new team will come against the team that just traded him.The teams also will meet in the second half of back-to-back games Thursday night at the Garden....