Noah Laba can take leap forward in development by easing Rangers’ workload in critical area

The barometer for progress in Noah Laba’s second season will be twofold. 

The Rangers forward entered wanting to add more offense to his game, wanting to improve upon his nine-goal, 24-point rookie campaign that displayed plenty of potential.

But head coach Mike Sullivan also said that Laba, and by extension his third line, can ease the workloads of Mika Zibanejad and J.T. Miller — whose ice time in 2025-26 jumped from the previous year — by earning trust to take defensive zone faceoffs too. 

Laba’s 50.8 percent success rate at the dot was the worst among the Blueshirts’ regular centers and ranked 78th in the NHL among skaters who took 300 faceoffs. But Sullivan described Laba as someone who’s “pretty good at the faceoff circle” and “has a better understanding of how we’re trying to play.”

He’ll occupy a critical role as their third-line center, and, with Vincent Trocheck gone, sits one injury away from top-six responsibility. He also now will be directly responsible for helping spell Zibanejad and Miller in certain defensive situations. 

“Last year, we leaned on J.T. and Mika a lot in those situations,” Sullivan said Wednesday. “[Laba] was a young guy, trying to find his way in the league, and I didn’t want to put him in difficult spots. I think now he’s got a year under his belt. … So our hope is that maybe we can take J.T. and Mika out of some of those situations and deploy them in a more advantageous situation offensively to try to take advantage of their strength as a group.” 

New York Rangers center Noah Laba (42) during training camp Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, at the Madison Square Garden Training Center in Greenburgh, N.Y. Robert Sabo for NY Post

Zibanejad averaged 20:54 of ice time, his highest since the 2019-20 campaign, and led the Rangers with 412 defensive zone faceoffs. Miller averaged 20:09 last season, marking a noticeable increase from 18:31 during his 31-game stint with the Blueshirts in 2024-25, and took 294 faceoffs in the Rangers end. Part of the spike in ice time stemmed from their penalty-kill contributions.

Part of that stemmed from anchoring the top power-play unit in addition to their top-six roles. 

Sullivan also has spoken about wanting to take away some of the penalty-kill minutes for Miller and Zibanejad, and he didn’t hesitate when asked if Laba’s line can help with the defensive-zone draws. Last year at this time, Laba was just trying to claw his way onto the roster and crack the opening-night lineup after a strong training camp. He aced his preseason tests with six points in six games. By the time the Rangers’ miserable campaign ended, he finished with 24 points in 74 games, meshed particularly well with Will Cuylle and managed to take 236 defensive-zone faceoffs, winning 50 percent of them. 

“Faceoffs are a big part of the game,” Laba, 23, told The Post on Friday, “so just continuing to get my faceoff percentage up is only gonna help the team and help in those crucial D-zone draws.” 

Laba and Cuylle have remained together throughout the preseason, including for the Rangers’ final exhibition Friday night against the Devils, while skating alongside newcomer Eeli Tolvanen. Sullivan thought that Cuylle and Laba enhanced the Blueshirts’ top-nine, as opposed to just limiting them to a top-six. 

And even after emerging as a bright spot in Year 1, Laba felt like he had more to prove in his encore with holding onto pucks longer, making more plays and believing in what he can contribute in the NHL. He has goals for numbers — which he declined to reveal — that he wants to reach offensively in 2026-27 but also aims to simply create more chances and trust that, eventually, the goals would follow the tangible opportunities. 

New York Rangers center Noah Laba (42) moves the puck down ice during the first period of a game against the Calgary Flames, Tuesday, March 10, 2026, at Madison Square Garden. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Post

And he has an added responsibility — a challenge, of sorts — to step into now too that could directly help unlock more for the Rangers offense. 

“Like Sully said, if our line’s able to relieve some of those minutes from those top guys, it’s big,” Laba said.