Adam Fox’s goals have come alive for Rangers after an injury-plagued season

At his best, and in seasons where his best keeps coming over and over again, Adam Fox has games like Saturday, when he made four shots, put up two goals and finished with three points.

He will still be a scoring threat from anywhere inside the Rangers’ opponent’s blue line.

He was logging minutes from the best players, igniting the power play and coming in when needed to kill penalties as well.

The Foxes will, by all accounts, be the cornerstone of the blue line. But for most of last season, the scoring layer was gone from Fox’s skill set. It took some time for him to rediscover his rhythm after a mild ACL injury early in the 2023-24 season, and he never found it again after aggravating the injury in the 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, his fewest in a full season since his rookie campaign in 2019-20.

This year’s sample size is still small. It will take more than four games for Fox to erase the remaining signs of decline offensively. But he has already collected three goals — and four points — through the Rangers’ first four games entering their showdown with the mighty Oilers on Tuesday at the Garden.

Fox has helped ignite the power play again. He delivered reminders of why he won the Norris Trophy in 2020-21 as the NHL’s best all-around defenseman and finished second two years later as well.

After much overhaul across the blue line over the past 10 months, Fox has once again emerged as the constant the Rangers can rely on.

“Sometimes it’s just the law of averages, I guess,” Fox said Saturday of his early-season scoring run. “Last year, the starting luck wasn’t great. This year, the same shots are finding a way in.”

Fox’s first year under new Blueshirts coach Mike Sullivan — and the first year of his reunion with current assistant David Quinn — has always been about the adjustment.

His longtime defensive partner, Ryan Lindgren, was dealt to the Avalanche before the deadline last year. The duo has skated together for 410 games and more than 5,500 minutes, according to Natural Stat Trick, and that cohesion can’t be microwaved. Jacob Trouba (December) and K’Andre Miller (July) were also traded. Will Borgen, Urho Vaakanainen and Carson Soucy have all been nominated to the Blueshirts’ blueline depth chart on the fly at various points.

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

Fox’s first goal came in the final minutes of the Blueshirts’ win over the Sabers on Thursday, when he shot a shot along the ice and into an empty net.

Two days later against the Penguins, Fox floated near the blue line as Matt Rempe couldn’t hit the puck and the rebound went around him. Fox stepped up on a shot that beat Arturs Silovs, and later in the second period, he waited a moment after receiving the puck and drilled a wrist shot through traffic for a goal just moments after the power play began.

“As far as those goals go, it was great playing on the fourth line,” Fox said Saturday. “…And then JT (Miller) made progress on the power play. Like I said, we tried to keep it simple, so I think it’s just luck of the puck and the same shots finding a way in tonight.”

Fox downplayed his early production, but Sullivan talked Saturday about how Fox can slow the game down. He transformed his ability to defend strongly and played in many critical situations for Rangers already. About how his offensive production speaks for itself.

Another offensive dehydration may occur at any time. Fox’s latest season showed that these can appear and take months before they fade away. Four games won’t make him a Norris Trophy candidate again.

But just one week into the season, Fox has already built a foundation that wasn’t on his ledger last year. It’s similar to what happened from 2023-24, when he collected 11 points in 10 games before a November 2023 clash with the Hurricanes’ Sebastian Aho. This represents progress for the Rangers and for him.