Rangers Week Ahead: 1 more game before much-needed Olympic break
Perhaps no NHL team is as happy to see the three-week break for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics arrive than the New York Rangers.
The Blueshirts were 2-10-1 in their final 13 games in January after starting the month with a 5-1 victory over the Florida Panthers at the NHL Winter Classic in Miami. That includes losing their final three games last week after a 4-3 overtime win against the Boston Bruins at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 26.
The last of those losses came Saturday in Pittsburgh, where the Rangers got close after trailing by four with less than 12 minutes left but came up a goal short. The 6-5 loss to the Penguins concluded one of the worst months in franchise history and capped the Rangers’ drop to the bottom of the Eastern Conference. They enter the week at 22-28-6; their .446 points percentage is last in the East and the third-worst in the NHL.
They’ll take the ice for their only game of the week, a visit from the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday night, without leading scorer Artemi Panarin; he’ll miss his fourth straight game. The Rangers announced before their 5-2 loss to the New York Islanders on Wednesday that Panarin won’t play before the Olympics because of “roster management” – the idiom teams use when they want to make sure a player doesn’t get hurt before they can trade him.
Of course, there’s the chance Panarin is traded before Thursday, too. Either way, the 34-year-old won’t play against the Hurricanes
The Rangers informed Panarin, a pending unrestricted free agent, that they won’t offer him a new contract. Because he has a no-movement clause, the Rangers are working with him to find a new team; Panarin wants a sizeable new contract as part of any deal.
Meanwhile, he sits – and the Rangers keeps losing.
And Panarin’s not the only player the Rangers could trade before the NHL roster freeze Wednesday. Stay tuned.
Who’s Hot?
Mika Zibanejad continues to be the best forward on the Rangers. He leads them with 23 goals (11 on the power play) and passed Hockey Hall of Famer Andy Bathgate for fifth place on the Rangers all-time list with No. 273 on Thursday. Zibanejad is one of the few bright spots in a season gone south.
Who’s Not?
Rookie defenseman Scott Morrow is proving he’s not ready for the NHL. The puck skills that were supposed to be the strong part of his game are rarely in evidence; he has more turnovers than a bakery and is losing more confidence from coach Mike Sullivan every game. Adam Fox’s return and Vincent Iorio’s arrival off the waiver wire from the San Jose Sharks could result in Morrow returning to AHL Hartford in the near future.
Rangers lookahead this week includes …
Four days off, then a home game before the NHL takes a three-week break for the Olympics. They resume play against the Philadelphia Flyers at MSG on Feb. 25.
Carolina Hurricanes at Rangers (Feb. 4, 7 p.m.; MSG)
The Metropolitan Division leaders and the Rangers split two games in November, with the road team winning each time, before Carolina won 3-2 on Dec. 29, when Jackson Blake scored a power-play goal with 13 seconds left in overtime.
Former Rangers defenseman K’Andre Miller makes his first appearance at the Garden as a visiting player following the July 1 trade that sent him to Carolina; an injury forced him to miss the Hurricanes’ 3-0 win on Nov. 4. He has 22 points (four goals, 18 assists), is averaging a career-high 22:35 TOI, and is minus-1 in 47 games on a team with a plus-31 goal differential.
Carolina begins the week 6-0-2 in its past eight games and is pulling away from the rest of the division. The Hurricanes continue to play their pressure-the-puck style under coach Rod Brind’Amour, and they’ve gotten a major boost from goaltender Brandon Bussi, a 27-year-old rookie waiver claim in October who idolized Henrik Lundqvis growing up on Long Island. Bussi, who got the overtime win against the Rangers in late December, improved to 21-3-1 with a 3-2 overtime win against the Los Angeles Kings on Sunday and would undoubtedly love to defeat the Rangers at the Garden.
The Hurricanes are 6-1-0 against the Rangers since the start of last season.
Sebastian Aho, the OT hero against the Kings on Sunday, has 29 points (13 goals, 16 assists) in 34 games against the Rangers. Zibanejad has 38 points (15 goals, 23 assists) in 43 games against the Hurricanes.
