Adam Fox’s scoring has come alive for Rangers following injury-filled season

At his best, and in the seasons where his best kept appearing over and over again, Adam Fox would produce games like Saturday, when he took four shots, deposited two goals and finished with three points.

He’d remain a scoring threat from anywhere inside a Rangers opponent’s blue line.

He’d log top-pair minutes, spark the power play and chip in when needed to kill penalties, too.

Fox, by all measurements, would be the cornerstone of the blue line. But for most of last season, the scoring layer of Fox’s skill set disappeared. It took time for him to rediscover his rhythm after a mild MCL strain early in the 2023-24 campaign, and he never found it again after aggravating the injury that postseason.

Then, last year, he went 27 games without a goal (and 40 without a power-play goal) to start and finished with 61 points, which marked his fewest across a full season since his rookie campaign in 2019-20.

The sample size this year remains small. It’ll take more than four games for Fox to erase the lingering signs of a step back offensively. But he has already collected three goals — and four points — through the opening four Rangers games entering their showdown with the powerful Oilers on Tuesday at the Garden.

Fox has helped ignite the power play again. He has flashed reminders of why he won the Norris Trophy in 2020-21 as the NHL’s top all-around defenseman and finished as the runner-up two years later, too.

And after plenty of overhaul across their blue line over the past 10 months, Fox has again emerged as the constant the Rangers can rely on.

“Sometimes it’s just the law of averages, I think,” Fox said Saturday of his scoring run to start the season. “Last year, the puck luck to start wasn’t great. This year, the same shots find a way to go in.”

Fox’s first year under new Blueshirts head coach Mike Sullivan — and the first year of his reunion with now-assistant David Quinn — was always going to revolve around adjusting.

His longtime defensive partner, Ryan Lindgren, was dealt to the Avalanche ahead of the deadline last year. The pair skated together for 410 games and over 5,500 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick, and that cohesion can’t be microwaved. Jacob Trouba (December) and K’Andre Miller (July) were traded, too. Will Borgen, Urho Vaakanainen and Carson Soucy all filtered into the Blueshirts blue-line depth chart on the fly at different points.

But then Vladislav Gavrikov inked a seven-year deal in free agency to slot next to Fox in the top pairing. They could have at least four seasons to work together based on Fox’s contract, four years to build and sustain chemistry. And the early results have been promising.

Fox’s first goal materialized in the final minutes of the Blueshirts win against the Sabres on Thursday, when he flipped a puck the length of the ice and into the empty net.

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Two days later against the Penguins, Fox floated near the blue line as Matt Rempe couldn’t knock in a puck and the rebound cycled around. Fox stepped into a shot that beat Arturs Silovs, and later in the second period, he waited an instant after receiving the puck and flicked a wrist shot through traffic for a goal just moments after a power play began.

“On those goals, it was great play by that fourth line,” Fox said Saturday. “… And then J.T. [Miller] just getting net front on the power play. Like I said, we tried to simplify, so I think it’s more just puck luck and the same shots that found a way to go in tonight.”

Fox downplayed his early production, but Sullivan raved Saturday about how Fox can slow the game down. About how he can defend hard and has played in numerous critical situations for the Rangers already. About how his offensive production speaks for itself.

Another offensive drought could happen at any point. Fox’s last season showed that those can pop up and take months before fading. Four games won’t make him a Norris Trophy favorite again.

But just a week into the season, Fox already has constructed a foundation his ledger didn’t have last year. It’s similar to the one from 2023-24, when he collected 11 points in 10 games before that November 2023 collision with the Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho. And that, for the Rangers and for him, marks progress.