Rangers have ‘mixed’ emotions after disappointing season ends with win
The New York Rangers enter a second straight extended offseason after failing to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs in back-to-back seasons. Not even a season-ending 4-2 road win against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday night could take away the disappointment of finishing last in the Eastern Conference and 29th or 30th in the NHL standings (they’ll end up 30th if the Calgary Flames don’t win Thursday against the Los Angeles Kings).
Coach Mike Sullivan admitted that his first season behind the bench at Madison Square Garden didn’t end the way he, his players and Rangers fans were expecting when the season began last October. But all wasn’t gloom and doom, either.
“They’re mixed right now,” he said when asked about his emotions after the Rangers finished 34-39-9. “Obviously we’re not in the position that we hoped to be in, or where we want to be. From that standpoint, we’re all disappointed and we all have to take ownership for it, myself included.
“There will be a process we’ll go through to try to figure out how we can do a better job in the positions that we’re in to try to put this team into a better position moving forward.”
One thing Sullivan was pleased with was the way his team competed after play resumed following the Olympic break. Despite being out of the playoff picture thanks to a 22-29-6 record before the break, the Rangers were 12-10-3 in their 25 post-Olympic games, including 6-4-0 in their final 10.
Fun returned to a locker room that had been starved of it, with rookies, including forwards Gabe Perreault, Adam Sykora and Jaroslav Chmelar, defenseman Drew Fortescue, and goalie Dylan Garand, giving the final weeks of the season some meaning.
“I just said to the team after the game that we’re certainly proud of the way we competed down the stretch under difficult circumstances,” Sullivan said. “I always believe there’s something to play for when you put your skates on, but I give our players credit. I thought we competed hard.”
Younger Rangers players ‘brought some juice’ down stretch
One young player who competed and made a big impression every night down the stretch was 24-year-old forward Tye Kartye. He scored twice Wednesday and finished with 14 points (five goals, nine assists) in 24 games after being claimed off waivers by the Rangers from the Seattle Kraken on Feb. 27.
“Ever since I got here, I feel like we’ve played pretty well,” Kartye said postgame Wednesday. “Even some games that we lost, I thought that we deserved a better result. But pretty much every game we were in, we were working hard, that’s all you can ask for.”
Sullivan said young players like Kartye and Perreault, who scored his 12th goal Wednesday, “brought us a lot of energy.
“They bring us a certain level of enthusiasm,” he added. “They brought some juice, and I think that energy is contagious.”
Mika Zibanejad, who scored his team-leading 34th goal against the Lightning, agreed that the youngsters helped bring a spark to the final weeks of a lost season.
“The younger guys have shown real promise and have been giving us older guys a little bit more energy,” he explained. “It’s been fun to watch it. There’s a lot of good things — and I think a lot of things that you could be looking forward to and be optimistic about.
“Obviously, we have some work to do, but you have to try to somehow get something positive out of it. Because it would have been miserable the last few weeks if we couldn’t find something, so at least that’s something.
“I know it’s not good enough and it doesn’t get us to playoffs, but you always have a choice of how you look at things. There’s definitely some positives to take out of it.”
