The mission remained simple for Conor Sheary. After clawing his way onto the Rangers roster through a professional tryout in training camp, and after spending most of last season with the Lightning\u2019s AHL affiliate, he wanted to prove \u2014 to himself, to everyone around the league \u2014 that he could still contribute, that the version of Sheary from the Penguins teams that won back-to-back Stanley Cups early in his career still existed.<\/p>\n
But Sheary struggled. Really struggled. <\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t tally his first goal until his 27th game. He didn\u2019t score his second until March 10. He was a healthy scratch at times and then missed the final 17 games leading into the Olympic break with a lower-body injury. There were chances for more goals, Sheary admitted, but instead all that emerged were questions.<\/p>\n
Head coach Mike Sullivan, who coached Sheary for three-plus seasons in Pittsburgh, stuck by him. Sheary kept a spot in the lineup even as the Rangers auditioned younger pieces. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mission remained simple for Conor Sheary. After clawing his way onto the Rangers roster through a professional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[5,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36,43,336],"class_list":{"0":"post-549933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-rangers","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-rangers","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkrangers","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-rangers","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116383395614856901","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}