Brad Penner-Imagn ImagesWhere do the New York Rangers go from here?
As it stands right now, the Rangers sit in last place in the Eastern Conference standings with a 20-22-6 record, eight points out of the second wild-card spot.
The team is in the midst of a five-game losing streak, marking its largest winless streak of the season.
Losing games in order to secure a higher draft pick isn't necessarily a bad thing at this point in the year, with the playoffs becoming less and less attainable.
However, the product that is thrown onto the ice is also important, and the manner in which the Rangers have been losing games as of late, including a 10-2 loss to the Boston Bruins and 8-4 defeat against the Ottawa Senators, is not sustainable in building a culture and setting a certain standard, something Mike Sullivan has continuously preached.
“Early on this season, we lost games, but I thought the effort was there,” Mika Zibanejad said. “I’m not saying the effort (isn’t there now), but our game isn’t. I thought we played better, we deserved better early on, but right now, we don’t. And that’s a tough pill to swallow.”
There’s a lack of confidence, cohesiveness, and urgency coming from this Rangers team. It’s become an ugly situation while playing at Madison Square Garden, with boos and chants of “Fire Drury” dominating much of the team’s recent games, and their 5-13-4 home record certainly doesn't help.
“I just think when you go through struggles we're going through, our confidence isn't all that high, and when things don't go the right way, especially early on in the game, it can affect the mindset of the group,” Sullivan said. “That's been our challenge, is to try to find a way to keep some resilience, keep a competitive spirit, and enthusiasm, any adjective you want to use to try to give ourselves the best chance to put our best game on the ice.”
The playoffs may be a pipe dream for the struggling Blueshirts, but something has to give, and some sort of change must be made, whether that means making a trade, drastic lineup changes, or even unorthodox call-ups from the American Hockey League, just to send a message that what has been transpiring is simply not acceptable.
From a trade standpoint, the boat starts with Artemi Panarin, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer, with no signs of a contract extension even close to being agreed upon.
According to Vince Z. Mercogliano of The Athletic, the Rangers have yet to approach Panarin about waiving his no-move clause, but given the current state of the team and Panarin’s contract situation, it feels like an inevitability that Drury will look to trade the veteran forward.
Sullivan tried to send a message earlier in the week by dropping Alexis Lafrenière to the third line and made it a point to publicly emphasize that it was a performance-based decision.
That message was very short-lived though. By Wednesday night’s matchup, Lafrenière found himself back in a top-six role, proving Sullivan’s move was more of a slap on the wrist as opposed to a real message being sent.
There needs to be accountability for the Rangers’ recent play to show it is unacceptable, and that could include scratching prominent players out of the lineup, similar to the way Peter Laviolette scratched Chris Kreider last season.
With the Hartford Wolf Pack, there are prospects who have been patiently waiting for an opportunity to showcase their skills at the NHL level.
Goaltender Dylan Garand is a prospect who comes first to mind, as the organization has no excuse not to give him a shot with Igor Shesterkin sidelined and placed on injured reserve, while Jonathan Quick and Spencer Martin have struggled in Shesterkin’s absence.
There’s also forward Adam Sýkora, who has more than done his time in the AHL, spending the last three seasons playing for the Wolf Pack. He’s a player not necessarily known for his skill, but he brings a ton of positive energy, and at this juncture of the season, he deserves a chance on Broadway.
These are not steps to attempt to make a last-second playoff push and salvage a failed 2025-26 campaign that has seemingly gone off the rails.
There are two sides to the coin.
The reality is that the Rangers will not make the playoffs, and retooling with the hopes of accumulating more assets for the future must be embraced by upper management and ownership for the betterment of the franchise.
On the other side of the coin, the way in which the Rangers lose matters, and even if they finish toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings by season’s end (which is a high probability), their level of play needs to meet a standard that’s emblematic of a team with a hard-nosed and resilient culture.
“We’ve run through the gamut of emotions here, trying to right this thing and get it going the right direction,” Sullivan said. “And we’ll continue to try to solve it. There’s no easy answers. We’ve got to work hard. We’ve got to work together. We’ve got to stick together. We’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to compete together. And that’s what we’re going to do.”