Rangers’ disappointing season leaves more questions than answers
It’s been a nightmarish season for the New York Rangers, who became the second team in the NHL to be mathematically eliminated from the Stanley Cup Playoffs with a 4-3 loss in Toronto on Tuesday night.
Head coach Mike Sullivan and captain J.T. Miller were tasked with turning things around after a shocking playoff miss in the 2024-25 campaign. Instead, the Blueshirts are a virtual lock to finish last in the Eastern Conference despite entering the season in win-now mode.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed why things have never felt quite right with the Rangers this season.
Tyler Yaremchuk: It was a season from hell for the New York Rangers, and not a team that went into this year thinking, ‘Hey, we’re tanking,’ or anything like that. They spent big on a new coach in Mike Sullivan, and it was a team was supposed to make this charge for them. But they didn’t give up from jump street, like the JT Miller trade. they didn’t give up like an arm and a leg to get him. I actually didn’t like that deal from a Vancouver perspective, so I don’t want to criticize the trade and what they gave up for him, but like was that in hindsight a little bit of a square-peg-round-hole kind of fit for this team? Considering where they were ,and now you even look like there’s a lot of names here. How upset is Adam Fox on that blue line? We’ve heard some rumblings about the team. I don’t think he’s going to leave New York, but if they sit there and say, ‘Hey, we’re three years away from competing’ is Zibanejad putting up his hand and saying, ‘Yeah, sure. I’m signing up to go through that sort of a mini rebuild.’ If that’s what your plan is, even JT Miller, like I just with the amount of aging guys they have on this team, I have a hard time thinking they can just bounce back next year, but I have a hard time thinking they can fully pull the chute and be like, ‘We’re rebuilding for four years.’ I come out of this year with more questions than answers for the Rangers.
Carter Hutton: And I think rightfully so, right? You know everything that has gone on, the big trade, obviously Panarin moving out, JT Miller coming in before that. You’re getting JT Miller, and he’s got 14 goals for you… 42 points. Like this is a player that can [put up] 100 points for the Vancouver Canucks. He scored 37, scored 32, before that, 30. His production has dropped and again, it’s his physical play… I reached out to Jonny Lazarus today just to try to get his, because you know, he’s got his finger on the pulse with the Rangers. He talks a lot about the Vincent Trocheck and Adam Fox injuries early in the year, like throwing off that group offensively in depth charts and stuff that’s gone into it. So I do think there’s a bit of injury concern, but this is just a team that it was these lackluster efforts at home for me that really set the tone for this team. I don’t know if you feel that way. It felt like JT Miller came in there, and it was like this no bullshit mentality and ‘we’re going to play and we’re going to work our ass off. We’re going to do all this stuff,’ and then there’s like viral clips of him not having effort at home and these games where they couldn’t score and it was lack of physical play. And again, it’s not always going to be execution in hockey. It’s got to be effort, and I feel like at times the effort wasn’t there with the squad. I think it’s disheartening.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…