Brad Penner-Imagn ImagesCulture is a word that we’ve heard within the New York Rangers’ organization from the top down for months now.
Between their play on the ice and constant off-ice rumblings, the Rangers’ culture was in disarray throughout the entirety of the 2024-25 campaign.
Just one year removed from a trip to the Eastern Conference Final, the Blueshirts missed the playoffs entirely, marking one of the most notable collapses in the franchise’s history.
In the process, Rangers president and general manager Chris Drury traded multiple core players, including Jacob Trouba, Kaapo Kakko, Filip Chytil, Ryan Lindgren, and later on, Chris Kreider.
The reasoning and the root cause for this sudden collapse and cultural struggles could be debated.
The finger was ultimately pointed at Peter Laviolette, who was fired after just two years on the job.
While Drury was heavily criticized for his role in the sudden culture shift, specifically when it came to his handling of seeking out trades for both Trouba and Kreider, Dolan publicly extended Drury’s contract after the season.
“What I can tell you about Mr. Drury from the day I hired him is Chris Drury is a winner and a competitor. He’s won, himself, he can’t stand to lose,” Dolan said.
To replace Laviolette, the Rangers hired Mike Sullivan and made him the highest-paid coach in NHL history.
Sullivan is a coach who was reportedly on Drury’s radar for years and was brought in to help establish a strong culture.
“We thought they needed a change in the coach,” Dolan said. “This coach (Sullivan) is a culture coach. He’s also a collaborator and a builder of teams.”
Where are the Rangers in their attempt to rediscover their identity and build a newfound culture at just around the midpoint of the 2025-26 season?
From the surface level, the Rangers’ 20-19-6 record, which puts them out of the playoffs and their 2.59 goals per game, ranking toward the bottom of the NHL, indicates that the Blueshirts are yet to turn the page as a team under the tutelage of Sullivan.
However, compared to last season, the Rangers are playing a much more structured game, specifically from a defensive standpoint, as they are giving up far fewer odd-man rushes with the team being less prone to defensive breakdowns.
“I think it's been a little bit of a mixed bag,” Sullivan said of the Rangers’ progress in changing the culture. “Obviously, from just a performance standpoint, we'd like to be in a better spot than we are. Having said that, I don't want to sit here and say we haven't made progress on what we're trying to accomplish. I think about the things that were brought up by Mr. Dolan in the discussion leading up to me joining this group was to try to build something sustainable. I think that's something that I think about a lot, and Chris (Drury) and I have a lot of conversations around that.
“There's a process that's taking place right now, for example, one of the things that I thought was important coming into this was to try to build a team that played with more structure without the puck, and so we felt that that's an important element of winning consistently in this league. That's something that is a daily endeavor, and trying to try to improve and get better at that. I feel like we've made progress of that. There's a number of things that we're trying to build from an identity standpoint. I just think it's a work in progress, and it takes time.”
Sullivan has been a part of two Stanley-Cup winning teams with the Pittsburgh Penguins, and he knows there’s more to being a successful organization than just performing well on the ice.
Dolan called Sullivan a "collaborator" and a “builder of teams”.
People have different philosophies in building a championship level team and a strong culture. To Sullivan, the correct formula all comes in the way the team prepares for a season or any given game, something he’s been attempting to change and revamp behind the scenes.
“We've talked about creating a standard of excellence that we all can be proud of,” Sullivan emphasized. “What does that mean? How does that manifest itself in real life? We're asking our players to embrace that. I mean, it's everything from the energy level, the enthusiasm, the passion that we bring and the intentions that we bring in practice. I've always been a strong believer that we are what we repeatedly do, and if we practice hard, we practice with intensity, we practice with passion, and practice with purpose that those types of things carry over, but that's a that's a daily endeavor, and that's not easy to do, that's not easy to do in today's NHL. It's a grind and we're asking for that commitment every day, we're asking for, you know, improvement in our nutrition program, we're asking for improvement in how we train off the ice, and embracing that with enthusiasm, where.
“We're trying to utilize science and the technology that we have at our disposal to try to help us make good decisions with respect to workloads on a day-to-day basis, and we consult with our strength conditioning guys, and we try to use science to guide us there. Not that it's the end all be all, but it certainly is. It can be very helpful. We believe in that element of our daily process, so these are all things that, in my mind, are cultural… And then there's other things that I think are essential to have success in pro sports, it's hard. It's ultra competitive resilience, for example, how do we handle adversity, how do we deal with the ebbs and flows inside of a game when it doesn't go our way, or even from game-to- game, how do we deal with the noise around our team. These are all things that we could talk about for days, but these are all things that we're trying to implement and that we're asking our players to embrace with enthusiasm.”
With the Rangers’ playoff hopes continuing to dwindle, Drury may be forced to take a selling approach at the trade deadline, dealing away certain veteran players with the intention of accumulating more assets and securing a better future.
This means that Sullivan’s culture he's trying to establish is more of a long-term plan that will likely not pay dividends this season in terms of reaching the playoffs.
In an uncharacteristic move, Dolan preached patience for the Rangers, making it crystal clear that he fully believes in Drury and Sullivan.
“He (Drury) and Mike Sullivan are installing a new culture into that club, and that does not happen overnight,” Dolan said.
“As an owner you have to be patient. The guy sets out a plan. When I get impatient is when we veer off the plan, reach for the shiny thing and think we can win a championship or build a championship team in one fell swoop. You know, I’ve been at this for almost 30 years and I can tell you it does happen once in a while but I don’t think that’s the way. I don’t think that’s how we’re going to win.”