Rangers Week Ahead: Bidding farewell to another disappointing season
A long offseason for the New York Rangers begins in just a few days.
Two games remain before the Rangers end their second straight non-playoff season – one that saw them never get more than three games over the NHL version of .500 and tie a team record by being shut out 10 times. They’ve been below NHL .500 since a 4-2 loss to the Seattle Kraken on Jan. 12 dropped them to 20-21-7.
New York is 33-38-9 entering its final two games, visits to the Florida Panthers on Monday and the Tampa Bay Lightning on Wednesday. The Rangers are last in the Metropolitan Division and on the bottom of the Eastern Conference. They’re assured of coming in last in the division for the first time since 2017-18 – and they’re on the verge of ending up at the bottom of their conference for the first time since the League’s initial expansion in 1967 (they were last in the six-team NHL in 1965-66).
The Rangers entered last week coming off back-to-back home wins against the Detroit Red Wings and Washington Capitals, but the Buffalo Sabres spoiled their home finale on April 8 by rallying in the third period for a 5-3 win. The Blueshirts began a season-ending three-game trip on Saturday by playing the Dallas Stars to a standstill through more than 52 minutes before Jason Robertson’s power-play goal broke a scoreless tie. He added an empty-netter to hand the Rangers a 2-0 loss.
This is a season that can’t end fast enough for the Rangers, despite a better push down the stretch. There have been a few positives — Mika Zibanejad’s rebound, some impressive efforts in the final weeks by the younger players, and Igor Shesterkin’s solid goaltending, to name three.
But there were too many nights when the Rangers couldn’t turn a good performance by Shesterkin into a win, too many games when they appeared to be uninterested in competing, and far too many times when they simply couldn’t score.
Injuries, especially to Shesterkin and top defenseman Adam Fox didn’t help. But in the end, this is a team that lacks elite-level talent — and won’t find any big names available on the free-agent market.
Who’s Hot
Alexis Lafreniere continued his post-Olympic surge by scoring twice against the Sabres in the home finale on April 8. He’s up to 24 goals, four shy of his career-best 28 in 2023-24, and has a career-high 31 assists. His 55 points are two short of the 57 he posted two years ago.
Who’s Not
Gabe Perreault had his first NHL hat trick in a 4-1 win against the Detroit Red Wings on April 4. He’s gone without a point and is minus-2 in the three games since then, managing just two shots on goal.
Rangers lookahead this week includes …
Two games in the Sunshine State before heading home for breakup day and a much-too-long offseason. Again.
Rangers at Florida Panthers (April 13, 7 p.m., MSG)
If you think the Rangers’ season is a disappointment, picture rooting for a team that began 2025-26 with hopes of winning its third straight Stanley Cup championship and is ending it by missing the playoffs – the first defending champion to do so since the 2014-15 Los Angeles Kings.
Nothing went right for the Panthers, who lost their captain and best player, center Aleksander Barkov, with a season-ending knee injury during training camp. The injuries kept piling up for Florida, which comes into the game at 38-38-4, third from the bottom in the Eastern Conference. Two of those regulation losses came at the hands of the Rangers, including a 5-1 wipeout at Miami’s loanDepot Park in the NHL Winter Classic on Jan. 2. The Rangers also won 3-1 at MSG on March 29.
With the possibility that Rangers backup goaltender Jonathan Quick might call it a career after this season, the Panthers look like a good opponent for his final NHL start. Quick is 13-5-0 with a 2.51 goals-against average and .918 save percentage in his 18 career starts against Florida. Sergei Bobrovsky, who’s having arguably the worst season of his career (3.07 GAA, .877 save percentage) after leading Florida to back-to-back titles, was the loser in both games against the Rangers.
Rangers at Tampa Bay Lightning (April 15, 7 p.m., MSG)
The Blueshirts finish up with a visit to the scene of one of their happiest memories this season – a 7-3 drubbing of the powerful Lightning at Benchmark International Arena on Nov. 12. The Rangers scored on each of their first three shots that night and sent Andrei Vasilevskiy to the bench after two periods, the two-time Stanley Cup champion having allowed five goals on 13 shots.
It was the fifth straight road win for the Rangers and lifted them to 9-7-2 overall and 8-1-1 away from Madison Square Garden at the time. Vincent Trocheck and Will Cuylle each scored twice, and Shesterkin made 33 saves.
The Bolts got even on Nov. 29 with a 4-1 win at the Garden, when the Rangers barely bothered to show up, and the teams’ paths diverged after that. The Lightning enter their final two games in a three-way battle with the Sabres and Montreal Canadiens for first place in the Atlantic Division. The Rangers … well, let’s not belabor the point.
The Blueshirts have great success against Vasilevskiy, who is just 7-9-2 against New York. Shesterkin, in contrast, is 8-4-1 with a 2.39 GAA and .922 save percentage against Tampa Bay. New York has had much less success shutting down Lightning star Nikita Kucherov, who set up three goals in the win at the Garden and has 10 goals and 40 points in 32 games against the Rangers. He begins the week second in the NHL with 128 points, five behind Edmonton’s Connor McDavid.
