J.T. Miller demoted from Rangers top power-play unit in latest attempt to get things going

Mike Sullivan followed the power-play advice of his former Boston University hockey coach Jack Parker — “Start with what you deem the five best players and then go from there,” Sullivan recalled — to open the season.He kept J.T.

Miller, Adam Fox, Mika Zibanejad, Pavel Dorofeyev and Alexis Lafrenière together, for the most part, and remained patient. But with the Rangers entering play Monday ranked 18th (20.0 percent) with the man advantage this season, they made changes, demoting Miller, bringing Gabe Perreault to the first group and having Tye Kartye take the place of Eeli Tolvanen with the second unit.Sullivan said the coaching staff included the initial five players on the top power-play line in the discussions, adding that the players “want to take ownership for that.”  Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Mollie Walker about the inside buzz on the Rangers.

“I just think at this particular point in time, I could feel or sense an element of frustration just because the guys care deeply,” Sullivan said.“And so sometimes a little bit of change can bring a reset.

Is this the long-term solution? I’m not sure.I don’t know the answer to that yet, but we’re gonna — we made this decision to split the groups.” The most notable tweak involved Miller, the captain who has been a mainstay with the top group since Sullivan took over.

Miller has collected one goal and one assist with the man advantage this year and has generated six individual high-danger scoring chances, according to Natural Stat Trick, but his individual expected goals number (0.97) was the lowest among forwards on the Rangers’ initial top power-play line. “We’ve been way below our standard, I think, so far,” Miller said.“I even think when we were scoring goals earlier on, we were opportunistic.

… At some point, you gotta do a little shake-up.… Typically when we do that, we get some juice, and try ...