NEW YORK (AP) — Anton Frondell was playing in the Swedish hockey league playoffs on Saturday and got the call shortly after his team was eliminated that the Chicago Blackhawks want their top prospect to come to North America.

Not eventually. Now.

“I was shocked,” the 18-year-old Frondell said. “Everything has been going really fast.”

That includes being thrust into the action, making his NHL debut on Tuesday at the New York Islanders on Chicago's top line alongside Connor Bedard and as part of the first power play unit. Nine months after he was taken with the third pick in the draft, Frondell is getting a big role right away.

“It’s great," said Bedard, the face of the franchise. "Just throw him in there and give him the minutes, power play and just have him in the same role he was playing in all year.”

Coach Jeff Blashill wants Frondell, who turns 19 in May, to “capitalize on the confidence he has coming into the league.” That's the thought process behind seeing how Frondell handles hockey in the deep end.

“If I didn’t think he could handle the spots that I’m putting him in, I wouldn’t do it right away because you don’t want to set somebody up for struggles,” Blashill said. “I think he can handle it, and I think he’s prepared at this moment to walk in and be successful in those spots.”

Frondell's first game in the league comes against someone he got to know throughout the pre-draft process: now-Islanders defenseman Matthew Schaefer, who was taken with the first pick and has since shown why.

Schaefer has been a revelation. He is the runaway front-runner to win the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year and the biggest reason New York is in the playoff race.

“It’s really fun to watch what he does,” Bedard said of Schaefer. “For someone to step in like that and do what he’s doing, it’s incredible. ... He’s among elite company of players in the league.”

Bedard and San Jose's Macklin Celebrini, taken with the top pick in 2023 and '24, are already in that company. Michael Misa, who the Sharks drafted between Schaefer and Frondell, is already more than 30 games into his rookie year serving as a complement to Celebrini and co-star Will Smith.

Frondell did not get the full training camp leadup to his debut, though he has a unique advantage from playing in the top league in Sweden, similar to what Auston Matthews did at age 17 in Switzerland a decade ago before Toronto picked him No. 1 in 2016.

“Playing pro hockey, playing men, it’s good — competing, battling,” Frondell said. “Everyone was stronger, I felt like, and it was experienced players who know how to battle in the corners. They know how to use their body. So, sometimes I felt like I got run over a couple times and tried to learn from it. It’s a hard game, hockey. You need to battle, and I like to do that.”

Sacha Boisvert's NHL debut coming soon

Sacha Boisvert, the 18th pick in 2024, is close to following Frondell's tracks into the league. Blashill said Boisvert “will for sure play on this trip.”

The Blackhawks visit the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday night, the Rangers on Friday night and the New Jersey Devils on Sunday night. Because they're out of contention, they can afford to slide Boisvert and Frondell into the lineup, along with other young players seen as part of the organization's future.

“I think part of this is figuring out what we have as we go through it, and then you kind of tweak your, not style, per se, but how you set up your lineup as you go,” Blashill said. "Right now let’s see what each guy kind of brings to the table.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — James Reimer kept expecting the New York Rangers to put shots on net.

They rarely did.

And by the end of the game Monday night, the Ottawa Senators had allowed just nine shots on goal in a 2-1 victory at Madison Square Garden. It was the fewest shots against in franchise history, the Rangers' lowest output since 1955 — and the worst by any NHL team in more than two decades, predating the salary cap.

"The boys played great," said Reimer, the Ottawa goalie.

Even more impressive, they did so after losing two more players to injury and playing more than half the game with just four defensemen. Thomas Chabot left in the final seconds of the first period after taking a stick to the right arm from Rangers captain J.T. Miller, and Lassi Thomson exited his first game in the league since Nov. 25, 2022, with an undisclosed lower-body injury in the second.

“Whenever you get down to four D-men and you find a way to win, it’s a gutsy effort," said Warren Foegele, who scored his fifth goal in nine games since joining Ottawa ahead of the trade deadline in a deal from Los Angeles. "The whole group stepped up when those guys went down.”

Chabot and Thomson will “both be out for a while,” according to coach Travis Green, who expects the team to call up two reinforcements Tuesday before playing at Detroit in a key matchup of teams fighting to make the Eastern Conference playoffs.

Ottawa was already without two of its top four defensemen, with Jake Sanderson possibly out another week and Nick Jensen recovering from knee surgery.

In their absence, Jordan Spence skated a career-high 26 minutes, 44 seconds. Tyler Kleven played 24:30, Artem Zub 23:44 and Nikolas Matinpalo 18:19.

“With two defensemen going down, guys have to step up, play a lot more minutes than they’re used to,” Green said. "Give them all credit. They played a hell of a game back there.”

Spence did not realize just how much ice time he was logging and was more focused on Chabot's departure.

“Chabby just doing how well he was doing and seeing that, it’s unfortunate,” Spence said. “We’re trying to win a game, so we kind of had to forget about that and try and do the best we can.”

The Senators became the first team since the salary-cap era began in 2005-06 to hold an opponent under 10 shots. New Jersey allowed Washington to put only nine on net on Dec. 4, 2003.

Shots on goal did not become an official statistic tracked by the league until 1959-60. The Rangers' record book listed their single-game lowest total as nine in a loss at Detroit on Dec. 11, 1955.

"They were better than us," Miller said, lamenting the performance after celebrating teammate Mika Zibanejad's 1,000th regular-season game. "We just didn’t have it. I don’t know what to say. We got outplayed, got outcompeted — things that we’re just not OK with as a group.”

Since starting a run back into the playoff race on Jan. 25, the Senators have allowed the fewest shots against in the NHL at just over 21 per game. They gave up only 14 while beating rival Toronto on Saturday and 19 on Thursday against the New York Islanders.

“That’s part of our structure,” Spence said. "That’s part of our identity, so we have to keep that going in order to win games.”

Reimer had to make just eight saves to pick up the win but acknowledged it wasn't exactly a comfortable night seeing such little action.

“These games are a lot harder than a 30- or a 40-shot night,” he said. “You’re not in a rhythm. You’re not feeling it. It’s not just happening, so you've just got to trust it and trust that your body knows what it has to do when the time comes. It’s a difficult game as a goalie to play mentally, but you just trust it."

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NEW YORK (AP) — Shane Pinto scored on the power play, Warren Foegele added his fifth goal in nine games since being traded and the Ottawa Senators made up more ground in their chase to make the playoffs by beating the New York Rangers 2-1 on Monday night.

The Rangers had just nine shots on goal, matching a franchise worst set on Dec. 11, 1955, in a defeat at Detroit. They lost for a 25th time in 34 home games this season.

Ottawa won its third in a row, improving to 14-3-2 since Jan. 25 and moving two points back of the second and final wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with 12 games to play.

The latest victory came at a cost of two more injuries to an already depleted defense. Thomas Chabot took a stick to the right arm from J.T. Miller in the final seconds of the first period and Lassi Thomson left his first NHL game since Nov. 25, 2022, during the second because of a lower-body injury. Neither returned.

The Senators, missing Jake Sanderson because of an upper-body injury and Nick Jensen following knee surgery, finished the game with four defensemen.

New York goaltender Igor Shesterkin stopped 31 shots and was the only reason the deficit wasn't worse. Conor Sheary scored on the Rangers' seventh shot to end James Reimer's shutout bid with 13 minutes left.

Mika Zibanejad skated in his 1,000th regular-season game, his 719th with the Rangers after playing his first 281 with Ottawa. Zibanejad was honored in a pregame ceremony with a video narrated by his wife, Irma, and presented a silver stick along with a mini version for their young daughter, Ella.

Up next

Senators: Visit the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday night in a matchup of Eastern Conference teams fighting to make the playoffs.

Rangers: Visit the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday night.

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