On the nights that roommates Ryan Lindgren and Adam Fox order food to be delivered to their apartment on the upper west side of New York City — which is to say pretty much every night they’re not playing for the New York Rangers — they engage in an interesting ritual.
Putting.
Fox’s girlfriend gifted him a portable putting green and that putting green has been installed in an open area of the apartment where they have a competition to see who has to go downstairs to pick up the food when it’s delivered. Which, as we noted, is pretty much every night.
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“We both don’t have a lot of skills in the kitchen,” Lindgren admitted.
Lindgren also has a portable putting green and when the weather turns in New York in the coming weeks the second putting surface will make its way to the outdoor grilling area on the top of their building. It’s possible there will be putting to determine who has to flip the burgers or grill the steaks.
The season, not unlike the Rangers’ season, has had its ebbs and flows for Lindgren putting-wise, who began hot but has cooled off in recent days. It may or may not be connected to Fox’s sudden decision to use Lindgren’s left-handed putter which doesn’t seem all that fair given that Fox golfs right-handed.
“Foxy’s got the hot flat stick,” Lindgren said. “All of a sudden he switched to mine.”
Few teams have endured the kinds of wild swings in fortune and tumult that have been brought to the Rangers’ door this season.
The offseason brought them the first overall pick in the draft, generational winger Alexis Lafrenière.
Defenseman Tony DeAngelo, long a lightning rod for his social media postings, ended up in a post-game fracas with netminder Alexandar Georgiev and was basically banished by the Rangers and awaits a trade and/or buyout.
Star forward Artemi Panarin stepped away from the team after a scurrilous report out of Russia seemed to target Panarin for his strong public opposition to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
And through it all the team forges forward, slowly edging upward in the arc of returning to Stanley Cup contender status thanks to a lineup dotted with promising young players.
On some level, a team is never more than the relationships forged within the dressing room walls. How those relationships form and flourish is sometimes difficult to pinpoint, difficult to understand from the outside. This is what makes what we know about the unique relationship shared by Lindgren and Fox both refreshing and a view onto a process that all teams go through at some point in their evolution from hoping to expecting. Or at least a process all teams hope to go through.
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In a very short period of time, it has become fashionable to consider the 23-year-old pals, and now defensive partners, as one unit. It is mindful of how we came over time to view Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith in Chicago, Jake Muzzin and Drew Doughty in Los Angles, Roman Josi and Shea Weber in Nashville, Erik Karlsson and Marc Methot in the halcyon days of the Senators or even, not to stretch the notion too far, but Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer.
At one point last month, veteran defenseman Brendan Smith referred during a video call to his young teammates as Batman and Robin, another dynamic duo to be sure.
Fox leads all Rangers in total ice time with Lindgren third. Only Panarin logs more power play time than Fox, whose name has already come up as a candidate for Team USA at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. Lindgren and Fox are key parts of the Rangers’ penalty killing machine, which ranks third in the NHL.
While there are basic similarities to their career arcs, they are in many ways yin and yang as opposed to interchangeable parts.
The two met at orientation before their first season with the U.S. National Development Team in Ann Arbor in 2014 and by the time school and hockey began that fall they were driving together to school and the rink. Fox spent a lot of time with Lindgren at Lindgren’s billet family home.
Two World Junior Championship runs followed that saw the pair win a gold and a bronze medal in 2017 and 2018, respectively.
Danton Cole, the head coach at Michigan State, was coaching the younger group of players in the NTDP when Lindgren and Fox arrived. They didn’t play together as defensive partners much during that time but Cole saw their friendship flourish and saw both take strides in rounding out their personalities and their games.
“Lindy, he had kind of that captain attitude right away,” Cole said. “Intense and passionate, he definitely brought that attitude.”
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He was the type of person that if confronted with a round peg, square hole situation, “he was just going to find a bigger hammer,” Cole said.
“Foxy, he was a little more cerebral and thought the game and made some plays,” Cole added.
Both evolved during their time with the NTDP before Fox headed off to Harvard where he starred for three years and Lindgren returned to his native Minnesota for a two-year run with the University of Minnesota.
Fox’s defensive play improved and he evolved into part of the leadership group while Lindgren became a better handler of the puck and offensive weapon, Cole recalled.
“It was kind of a neat to watch their progress,” Cole said.
He’s not surprised the two good friends have found success playing together given how they represent starkly different styles and approaches to the game.
“I think it’s invaluable, that kind of relationship,” Cole said, who believes that such a bond might be more important for defensive partners than forwards. “It’s almost like twins, thinking where the other guy’s going to be. They play off each other’s strengths.”
During their time at the NTDP, the vast majority of players attended the same high school. There was a USA Hockey homeroom where players gathered in the morning for attendance before heading off to class after which they would meet as a group and go to the rink together.
It was a perfect way for younger players like Fox and Lindgren to learn from other NHL-bound players like Auston Matthews, Charlie McAvoy and Matthew Tkachuk.
“There was no real fight over who got the master bedroom.” (Jared Silber / MSG Photos)Don Granato coached the older group in Ann Arbor before moving on to coaching roles with the University of Wisconsin, Chicago and now the Buffalo Sabres.
“They were leaders from Day One,” Granato said of Lindgren and Fox.
For 17-year-olds jumping out of bantam-aged play to play against older boys in the USHL, which is where the NTDP competes during the season, is often a daunting task.
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But Lindgren “loved that gritty challenge,” Granato said. “You could see watching him, and me just observing as the other coach, he thrived on that challenge.”
“And Fox had that swagger,” Granato said. “Foxy was like, ‘give me the puck, give me the puck.’ Every time he had the puck he extended the possession.”
In the summer of 2016, Lindgren was taken 49th overall by the Boston Bruins. Seventeen picks later Fox went to the Calgary Flames.
Neither would play a single NHL game for their respective drafting teams. In February 2018, Lindgren was part of a package that went to the Rangers for Rick Nash. A few months later, Fox was dealt to Carolina in a deal that saw Dougie Hamilton become a Hurricane.
When it didn’t appear as though Fox and the Hurricanes were going to be able to come to an agreement on a contract, Fox was traded to the Rangers in late April 2019.
The two had remained in regular contact since their departure from the NTDP and Fox recalls being at Harvard when Lindgren got his first call-up to the Rangers during the 2018-19 season.
“I was asking him a million questions after his first game,” Fox said. “I was just super curious. I was just trying to figure out what it was going to be like.”
The next fall, the two were reunited at Rangers’ training camp.
Coloring the excitement and the comfort at sharing this experience with his pal was more than a little nervousness, Fox admitted.
“There is competition for spots, especially as two young D-men,” Fox said. “And I was a bit nervous about having to compete with a good friend.
“Obviously you want the other one to do well. But there is a personal element to the process, too, of wanting to do your best and make an impression when there are limited roster spots. We were both obviously rooting for the other.”
Even though it wasn’t something the two spoke about, there was an understanding that whatever was going to happen in terms of the roster it was going to be separate from their relationship. And so it was when Lindgren was sent to Hartford at the start of the season while Fox remained with the big club.
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“Everyone’s going to be different and handle that kind of situation differently,” Lindgren said. “Me and Adam are very close friends, still it was definitely a little weird. And it’s definitely something that could get in the way between people.”
When Fox made the team, one of the first people he heard from was Lindgren.
“I remember texting him and saying that I was really happy for you and that you deserve this,” Lindgren said. “Obviously it was disappointing for me to get sent down but I was still really happy for him to make the team.”
Lindgren was called up to the Rangers after playing just nine games in the AHL and ended up playing 60 games for the Rangers that season. He also started to play regularly with Fox, a pattern that has been repeated to this day.
“Things just sort of took off from there,” Lindgren said.
Rangers head coach David Quinn took on the Rangers job in 2018. He did not know Lindgren or Fox personally. But Quinn was aware of their history together and the feeling was their respective skill sets and personalities would complement each other, which is why Quinn didn’t hesitate to put them together early on.
“I felt they would feed off of each other,” Quinn said.
Quinn believes the two are continuing to get better not just as partners but as complete players. Sometimes that’s harder in the second season as opposing teams hone in on tendencies and try and exploit younger players.
The fact the two have remained such good friends while their relationship on the ice has grown and evolved isn’t necessarily a coincidence, Quinn said.
“Whenever you have that personal relationship and that bond it’s got to spill over onto the on-ice performance,” he said.
The two were living in the same neighborhood but not together through the 2019-20 season. Still wary of being presumptuous, the two didn’t talk about actually moving in together until it became clear both were going to be on the roster for the truncated 2020-21 season.
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“It wasn’t something that we discussed because obviously, a lot can happen in the offseason,” Fox said.
Once the two figured rooming together was going to be in the cards Lindgren credits Fox with doing a lot of the pre-planning, looking at possible locations online and figuring out a place that made sense for them to get to the team’s practice rink in Tarrytown, N.Y., and of course to Madison Square Garden.
Ultimately the two settled on their two-bedroom unit in a seven-story building close to the highway for easy access to practices.
The one they chose provided a bathroom for each of the two bedrooms.
“So there was no real fight over who got the master bedroom,” Fox said.
They imagine that once the weather gets nicer and when COVID-19 restrictions become less rigid – if they become less rigid – they’ll be able to do some entertaining.
“I’m sure Lindy will get behind the grill,” Fox said.
The fact the two have known each other for so long means the potential friction of having a new roommate and division of labor like cleaning and the like has not been an issue.
While Lindgren lived with a group of hockey players in his final season at Minnesota and on his own during his first two seasons with the Rangers, this is his first time with a traditional roommate.
“It makes it a lot better and a lot more fun,” Lindgren said. “There’s highs and lows in a season and it’s really nice to have someone you can hang out with and go through the same kinds of things with.”
Having rooms to retreat to for privacy is nice, of course, but the two don’t seem to get on each other’s nerves in spite of spending virtually every moment of every day together.
There’s a lot of Xbox being played. “NHL ’21” is a regular post-practice form of relaxation as is “Rocket League.”
The two eat together most nights often with a hockey game on. The two will pay special attention to players they know from Minnesota or New York or Harvard.
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For a team that is still trying to forge an identity and has gone through some significant ups and downs this season, one might wonder if bringing work home to the apartment might create an unwanted level of tension or friction. But that hasn’t been the case. The two naturally talk about the evening’s game on the way home and the discussion may even bleed into the morning as they prepare for the next day’s schedule.
“But we’re not necessarily harping on too many things,” Fox said.
Sometimes the two, who also sit next to each other on the team’s charter flights (of course they do), will discuss that night’s game during the trip.
“We both understand mistakes happen,” Fox said. “Like, we’re not pissed if someone missed a pass. If we’re losing tight games or winning tight games we’re sharing the experience and we’re all kind of learning from it.”
And the fact is the two have such familiarity each one seems to know when to raise the issue of something that happened during a game and when not to and both believe their relationship has been a catalyst to their early success as NHLers.
“Neither one of us gets too rattled,” Fox said.
(Top photo: Nick Homler / New York Rangers)
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