They’re not going to tell you things are off the rails. But you have eyes.
You can see how wrong it’s gone for the New York Rangers. Eight days ago they were hitting the ice in Calgary, a 12-4-1 team that had gotten some incredible goaltending and timely scoring to get out to a fast start on the season.
Eight days later and it’s not only gone wrong on the ice and in the standings but in the executive suite and in the locker room. Friday’s 3-1 loss to the Flyers was the Rangers’ fifth straight regulation loss, something they haven’t done since the end of the 2020-21 season — a stretch of defeats that included the Tom Wilson-Artemi Panarin incident, Madison Square Garden’s subsequent public criticism of the NHL and the firings of president John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton.
That they haven’t had as bad a week in four years is a window into how good the Rangers have been since then. That the second bad week in four years has brought almost as much turmoil to this organization as the last one did is a window into how this team and its bosses seemingly get tossed into a full-blown panic when things start to snowball.
And this time there’s not the previous three seasons of rebuilding to blame for the pent-up frustration. The bad eight days in November still have left the current Rangers in a playoff spot, still with one of the best goalies in the league and a collection of pretty good talent all around.
So this chaos, these incredibly bad vibes, are all self-inflicted. And you can see what Chris Drury’s overreaction last weekend has wrought.
A first period on Friday so thoroughly lifeless and borderline embarrassing that only Igor Shesterkin stood between the Flyers and a 5-0 or 6-0 lead. Panarin getting into it with an entire five-man Flyers crew after a whistle with zero teammates coming in to back him up. An entire team, one that’s played decently in its own end before, seemingly allergic to the space between the hash marks in the Rangers end, where the Flyers produced about a dozen high-danger scoring chances in the first 40 minutes.
Then, finally, Shesterkin — you know, the guy the Rangers need to pay to be able to keep even a faint chance of being a Stanley Cup contender — skating off on his own, acknowledging no one, after yet another loss.
“That can’t happen to a team that’s sitting here, looking for ways to win hockey games,” Peter Laviolette said afterward.
As we outlined earlier on Friday, the reverberations of Drury’s leaguewide “come and get it” memo to the other 31 GMs on Sunday are still being felt. Chris Kreider, one of the two Rangers veterans mentioned by name in Drury’s note, is still out with the back spasms he so carefully noted in Raleigh a couple of days ago you’d have thought he had one of those anatomy charts next to him.
That may have been the longest-tenured Ranger’s way of telling the hockey world that he’s not feeling so hot and trading for him might not be in their best interest.
Jacob Trouba, the other named party in the note, hasn’t been hitting much lately. He hasn’t been talking much to the media, except when he has to answer for the GM trying to trade him for the second time in about four months. The idea of Trouba tossing his helmet and yelling at his own bench to wake (the f—) up, as he did around this time two seasons ago after a huge hit and fight, seems absurd at the moment.
You can call that indifferent behavior unprofessional. Unbecoming of an $8-million-a-year guy who wears the C. All true. But think about how we got here — Drury tried to put the cart before the horse in June, attempting to force Trouba into a move before the player was ready and before any other team, the Red Wings included, had even given much thought to acquiring him. That poisoned the situation.
Now it seems irreparable. No one is trading for Trouba with him playing like this, not now and maybe not this summer without a decent sweetener in the deal.
And there is a domino effect. Trouba was named captain despite not being a Ranger as long as some teammates because he did all the things you need to do as a leader. Fans may have wanted Kreider or Mika Zibanejad or Adam Fox, but it’s Trouba who has wrangled the team behind the scenes, has gone to coaching and management with player requests and has been an intermediary on sensitive issues between the front office and the locker room.
Kreider prefers to do his leadership work one-on-one with younger players. Zibanejad and Fox are lead-by-example types, very soft-spoken otherwise. It’s not a boisterous room filled with outsize personalities and Trouba was the guy they all looked to for leadership. Now, he’s adrift; it’s not that surprising the ship is listing too.
In such a crucial year, with Shesterkin due for big money, Alexis Lafrenière already cashing in (and not doing a whole lot since securing the bag) and K’Andre Miller mounting a very curious campaign to earn a big extension, the Rangers needed calm. They needed a steady hand.
They’ve got a snow globe getting worked over by a jackhammer at the moment. All in just eight days — off-ice turmoil, on-ice disinterest, you name it.
It’s some kind of world record for how fast this thing has fallen apart. The Rangers were within two games of a Stanley Cup Final back in June, a team that had flaws but enough skill in net and up front to feel like a contender for at least a little while.
The Barclay Goodrow saga, with Drury informing the alternate captain and well-liked teammate that he’d be on the 2 p.m. waiver wire at about 1:45, didn’t get the offseason going in the right direction. The Trouba thing hamstrung Drury’s attempts to remake the top four of his defense and also had the effect outlined above.
Now, at the first sign of real trouble this season, it’s a tire fire.
What will Saturday bring? The Canadiens, another young, fast team, come to the Garden. The Rangers have missed Filip Chytil, sure, as well as Kreider, but even at full strength this season they’ve looked painfully slow — either to react to teams counterattacking off turnovers or simply tracking back on a regular old rush. During this losing streak, they’ve stopped defending off O-zone possessions by opposing teams, leading to situations like Friday’s three-on-Shesterkin down low off a faceoff.
So what’s next? Do you strip Trouba of the C? Put him or someone else on waivers? All that does is further humiliate a core player, one of the reasons the Rangers are in this mess. Is Laviolette next? That would mark three coaching searches for Drury in four years. What about Drury? There’s no indication the president/GM is on the hot seat here, but remember what happened the last time the Rangers lost five in a row.
The Rangers do need something to change and they are getting older a lot faster than you would have thought watching them play deep into the postseason two of the last three playoffs. They’re playing poorly. They’ve gone from a comfortable spot near the top of the Metro Division to peering nervously below to all the mediocre teams bunched up close behind them.
But all that’s really changed for the Rangers is their own boss making them more and more miserable. Hard to see how that helps — or how it gets fixed soon.
(Photo: Kyle Ross / Imagn Images)
