Even though the New York Rangers missed the playoffs during the 2024-25 season, they were still entering the 2025-26 season with high expectations. This was not supposed to be a rebuilding year, a retooling year or any sort of transition year. This was supposed to be a year for contention and winning. Perhaps even big winning.
None of that has happened, and now they are starting to drift closer to complete and total embarrassment following an ugly and shocking 10-2 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon, falling to 20-20-6.
They entered the day with the second-worst points percentage in the Eastern Conference and are rapidly falling out of the playoff race. With star defenseman Adam Fox and starting goalie Igor Shesterkin sidelined for the foreseeable future with injuries, there seems to be little chance of playing their way back into contention. That should make management’s objective the rest of the way easy.
It is time for Rangers to sell
Perhaps the worst part about this season for the Rangers is management really thought this was going to be a good team.
We know that because everything they did in terms of building their roster over the past calendar year was geared toward winning right now.
If they did not believe they were a contender, they would not have acquired J.T. Miller prior to last year’s trade deadline.
They would not have hired a two-time Stanley Cup-winning head coach in Mike Sullivan.
They would not have invested heavily in veteran free-agent defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov.
All of those moves were “win-now” moves. Now that it is clear the 2024-25 season was not a fluke and this team is simply lacking the type of high-end talent it needs to compete, they need to start selling.
The only untouchables that should exist on this roster might be Fox and Shesterkin.
Pending unrestricted free agents Artemi Panarin (forward), Carson Soucy (defense) and Jonathan Quick (goalie) should be aggressively shopped. If they can find a taker for Mika Zibanejad’s contract, they should do it. Same is true for Miller and Vincent Trocheck.
It is an old team. It is an expensive team. It is also not a particularly good team. There is no need to try to hope this group figures it out, or make an effort to try to salvage this season by buying. They need a reset, and that should be the direction they start taking.