Rangers camp opens with priorities shifted by NHLs time crunch

For the Rangers and the 31 other NHL teams, time is not just of the essence as training camps opened across the league Wednesday.It is unprecedentedly finite.Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mollie Walker about the inside buzz on the Rangers.

The Blueshirts have just 12 days to finalize an Opening Night roster that’s going to springboard the team into a turnaround season.They have just four exhibition games — cut down from the usual six thanks to the new CBA — to experiment and figure out what combinations work best.Shaving a 48-man roster down to 22-23 might be relatively straightforward, but evaluating a team with new faces, ramping up conditioning and establishing a routine in such limited time is not.“I think the format, it changes things significantly,” head coach Mike Sullivan said at MSG Training Center on Wednesday.“The format of the camp is going to be completely different than what we ran last year.

Last year, we had three teams.This year, we’re going to have two.

When you look at starting tomorrow to Opening Night against Boston, we have 12 days.We have four exhibition games and two days off built into those 12 days.

If you take away that time, we essentially have 10 practices, six when they’re not including a game that night.So time is of the essence.

We thought long and hard about this, going through our coach’s meetings a month or so ago.Building this thing out and what we thought made the most sense.“We’re going to get after the team concept right away, start to instill concepts from Day 1 starting [Thursday].

And then still try to accomplish what we always try to accomplish in training camp, and that is to get the team ready for Game 1 and provide opportunities for people to show what they can do.”There are 13 fewer players on the Rangers training camp roster this year compared to last, with zero professional tryout agreements and zero junior-level players i...