The New York Rangers’ season is over before the Olympic break, as a landslide of shambolic hockey has left the entire organization stunned.
Wednesday night featured their ninth loss in 11 games in an 8-4 meltdown against the Ottawa Senators at Madison Square Garden. It is the second time in three games that the Blueshirts have yielded eight or more goals after getting ripped apart for 10 on Saturday by the Bruins in Boston.
They have won just five times in 22 home games this season, and only two of them have come in regulation. With 46 points through 48 games, they are dead last in the Eastern Conference with a minus-21 goal differential that is the fourth-worst in all of hockey.
This was a team that was supposed to be a lock for the playoffs, especially after bringing in a win-now coach like two-time Stanley Cup winner Mike Sullivan.
“We’ve gone through a rash of emotions. There’s been tons of anger,” Sullivan said following Wednesday night’s beatdown. “We’ve run the gamut of emotions here trying to right this thing and get it going in the right direction. We’ll continue to try to solve it. There’s no easy answers. We have to work hard, we have to work together, we have to stick together… that’s what we have to do.”
Much of the blame falls on the shoulders of general manager Chris Drury, who has led a team that advanced to a pair of Eastern Conference Finals in a three-year stretch from 2021 to 2024 and is now on the precipice of a second straight playoff-less season.
While Rangers fans chanted “Fire Drury” at MSG for the second straight game, a significant sell before the March 6 deadline is necessary. That appears to be the only way to jolt this team awake.
Despite claims of being a desperate team, the Rangers look nothing like it. They trailed the Senators 4-0 at the end of the first period to put Wednesday night’s affair to bed early.
“Early on this season, we lost games, but I thought the effort was there,” veteran forward Mika Zibanejad said. “I’m not saying the effort [currently isn’t there], but our game isn’t… If we had the answer to that, we wouldn’t look like this. We have to turn the desperation into energy. We have to turn whatever we’re feeling into some sort of energy.”
