Ed Mulholland-Imagn Images
In a season that’s drained the goodwill out of their loud and proud fan base, the New York Rangers hit rock bottom this weekend after getting smacked around and defeated 6-2 by the Tampa Bay Lightning Saturday. With the loss, the Blueshirts have fallen to the very bottom of the Metropolitan Division with a 16-18-1 record. That’s worse than the fifth-place Philadelphia Flyers (16-16-4), the sixth-place Columbus Blue Jackets (15-16-6) and the seventh-place New York Islanders (14-15-7). And that’s more than enough of a sample size to justify the Rangers firing coach Peter Laviolette, an otherwise-capable bench boss who clearly doesn’t have the solution for what ails his team.
Before the start of the season, the Rangers were projected to be a top team in the Metro. But now, they’re going to have to go on a lengthy (improbable) win streak just to get into the fringes of the mix for a Stanley Cup playoff spot. And imagine what the outcry will be if this Rangers team misses out on the playoffs altogether. If that happens, it will be one of the all-time worst choke jobs in the franchise’s history.
Is it too late for the Rangers to salvage their season? We’d have to say “yes” to that question. They indeed have one or two games in hand on many of the Metro teams ahead of them, but the Blueshirts also are 2-8-0 in their past 10 games, and since Nov. 19, they’ve gone an outrageous 5-14-0. In sum, they deserve to be where they are in the standings, and they aren’t inspiring any confidence that they’ll be able to turn their season around.
Think of the elite talent at every key position on this team – superstar forward Artemi Panarin, goalie Igor Shesterkin and defenseman Adam Fox – and try to envision how terrible the group around them has had to be in order to be where they are in the Metro standings. Trading captain Jacob Trouba hasn’t changed anything. Nor has trading youngster Kaapo Kakko. It really has amounted to moving deck chairs on the Titanic, and even if GM Chris Drury is intent on trading experienced talent such as Chris Kreider, Reilly Smith and Ryan Lindgren – the latter two who will be UFAs this coming summer – there’s going to be no changes to the Rangers’ core. That’s baffling and infuriating all at once.
The way the Rangers are going, they’re going to get a high pick in the next NHL draft. But one talented youngster isn’t going to solve the Rangers’ problems. They already have a capable young talent in winger Alexis Lafreniere. And while they do have $8.86 million in salary cap space at the moment, there’s no other team out there trying to throw them a life-preserver with a needle-moving long-term piece. The solution has to come from within, but as we’ve seen, their internal solutions simply aren’t sufficient to address the team’s woes.
If this losing skid continues, Drury will have no choice but to fire Laviolette, but which coach out there is going to be a magician and somehow steer this Rangers team into the post-season? To ask it is to answer it – there’s nobody on the horizon set to come in and fix this team. But, hanging on to Laviolette just for the sake of not making a coaching change doesn’t sound effective to us.
There’s still more than half a season left to play, so in theory, at least, there’s time for the Rangers to right their ship. But, the damage already done to their playoff aspirations has made it next-to-impossible to rise back through the Metro ranks and come out the other side looking like a team that can pull off a slew of wins and be a legitimate playoff threat.
Drury and Rangers management have to be held accountable for this abject failure. This is not simply mild underachieving that we’re talking about. This is a thorough, ugly collapse with long-term implications for the organization. The stench of so many losses will not easily come out in the wash, and the sooner the Blueshirts make significant moves, the better the Rangers will be.
Right now, though, it’s going to be extremely tough sledding for the Rangers, with many more losses likely to come. There’s no real cause for optimism for the franchise right now, only the rightfully-skeptical questions that have no easy answers. And that’s the fault of everyone in the organization, from top-to-bottom.
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