Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey!

The Rangers are back to their winning ways. After winning in Ottawa over the weekend, the Rangers beat the Avalanche and Lightning at home over the last three nights to increase their lead in the Met.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. Through the first 37 games of the season, the Rangers were 26-10-1 and had been atop of the Met since opening night. Their outstanding play through 45 percent of the season had made it so they could play below-.500 hockey for the remainder of the year and still reach the postseason.

They decided to test that theory in the New Year, losing four straight to Montreal, Vancouver, St. Louis and Washington in the opening weeks of January. After back-to-back wins over Washington and Seattle to momentarily right things, they went to the West Coast and put together the absolute opposite performance from their early-season West Coast/Western Canada 5-0 road trip, this time losing four of five. They returned home and avenged their 5-1 loss in Las Vegas by losing at home to the same Golden Knights 5-2. The Rangers had lost 10 of their last 15 and were embarrassed twice in eight days by the reigning champion Golden Knights.

2. For the last six weeks, the Rangers’ contender status has been called into question, and at times, rightfully so. But it was impossible to believe the team that won 18 of its first 23 games was going to continue to win 78 percent of its games over the entire season. The Rangers’ success over the first three months of the season essentially guaranteed them a postseason berth, and the remaining three-plus months would be about getting and hopefully remaining healthy for the postseason.

3. The Rangers last six weeks wasn’t a decline, just part of the normal ebbs and flows of the 82-game season. Even if the Rangers did win 78 percent of the games for the entire season, none of it would matter once the playoffs started. Just like it won’t matter if they win the Met, finish as a 2- or 3-seed or fall to a wild-card berth. The entirety of the 2023-24 season will be evaluated on what happens from Game 83 on.

4. Because of that, the lull of the NHL regular season has set in for teams like the Rangers that know they are going to the playoffs and will spend the remaining third of the season preparing for such. A big part of that preparation will be getting Igor Shesterkin back to playing at the best of his abilities, or like Jonathan Quick called him on Wednesday night, “the best in the world.”

Shesterkin found himself on the bench for the third straight game on Wednesday, and he belonged there, whether it was an organizational plan or not. His recent play warranted him being on the bench. Peter Laviolette recently said, “Shesty is our guy,” but this season Quick has been the guy.

After picking up the win in Ottawa on Saturday, holding the Avalanche to a lone Nathan MacKinnon goal on Monday and then shutting down the Lightning on Wednesday, Quick improved to 14-4-2 on the season.

“When we need him to make a big save, he’s made them,” Jacob Trouba said. “I think everyone here kind of rallies around what he’s doing for us right now.”

5. The last couple of seasons the Rangers needed Vezina-esque goaltending on a nightly basis to have a chance, the same way they needed it for the entire Henrik Lundqivst era. Like Lundqvist for 15 years, if Shesterkin didn’t carry the Rangers to a win, they weren’t going to win. That hasn’t been the case this season with Quick turning back the clock.

“We’re fortunate to have a guy like Jonathan in the stable,” Laviolette said.

“He’s been a rock for us all season,” Jimmy Vesey said. “He just battles and competes and has some swagger in net.”

6. It was Vesey’s two goals (one an empty-netter) that gave the Rangers a 1-0 lead over the Lightning and put Wednesday’s game out of reach in the final minute. But on a night when all of the Rangers’ scoring came from the bottom-six (Brodzinski had the Rangers’ second goal) and Quick was on his game, the first-year Ranger acted as though the result was expected.

“You take what comes and you try to make one save after another,” Quick said. “When we play like we did, it gives us a good chance to win every night.”

7. The Rangers have been winning every night once again. The day after getting embarrassed by Vegas, the Rangers went to Ottawa and found themselves in a 2-0 before scoring seven unanswered goals for a 7-2 win. On Monday night, trailing the Avalanche 1-0 at the Garden late in the third period, Artemi Panarin tied the game and Alexis Lafreniere won it in overtime. Quick was in net for all three wins.

“He’s given us really quality games,” Laviolette said. “Every day he comes to the rink, he’s ready to play. You’re appreciative of everything he does.”

8. The win over the Avalanche was especially encouraging. The Avalanche have beaten the Rangers handily in recent seasons, and the game served as a strong litmus test for the Rangers against the second-best team in the West (points-wise).

“That was a big win against a really good team,” Lafreniere said. “We wanted to play better defense, and I think we did a really good job.”

9. The Rangers have made a habit of blowing multi-goal leads and allowing multiple goals minutes apart this season. Those horrible trends have come to a halt on the three-game winning streak, and holding the Lightning and Avalanche to two goals total in two games is a sign that maybe the Rangers’ team defense has turned a corner.

“We’ve gone over a lot of things on the defensive side,” Vesey said. “We’ve done a good job with two games we can build on.”

10. The Rangers are undefeated in 15 home games when their opponent scores three or fewer goals. Despite their recent “slump” they remain atop the Met, where they have been all season.

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey!

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

The Rangers’ latest winning streak came to an end in Ottawa with a 6-2 loss to the worst team in the Eastern Conference.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. It’s difficult to be upset when the Rangers play as poorly as they played on Tuesday in Ottawa. Sitting atop the Met and the East with the league’s best record by points percentage, it’s easy to brush aside games and efforts like the one the Rangers produced against the Senators.

2. Playing the East’s last-place team after a day off, the Rangers fell behind 2-0 in the first period on goals by Brady Tkachuk and Claude Giroux. Artemi Panarin cut the deficit in half 39 seconds into the second period on the power play when he threw a shot into traffic from the point, and the puck found the back of the net like it alway seems to do off Panarin’s stick.

3. Five minutes later, the Senators answered with a goal from old friend Vladimir Tarasenko, who scored to make it 3-1. (Tarasenko added a empty-netter as well because why wouldn’t he? Every ex-Ranger has to score against hte Rangers. That’s the rule.) Twenty-two seconds after Tarasenko made it a two-goal game again, K’Andre Miller scored to trim the Senators’ lead to 3-2. But that’s all the Rangers would get for the rest of the game, as the Senators’ three-goal second was too much to overcome.

“The second period was a track meet,” Peter Laviolette said. “I mean, it went up and down the ice at 100 miles an hour. One way going 100 is fine, but the other way, we have to have better reads and better decisions coming out of offensive zone play.”

4. The Rangers allowed five-plus goals for a second straight game and it was their fourth time allowing four-plus goals in their last six games.

“There’s things we did that didn’t give ourselves the best chance at being successful,” Laviolette said. “I think that they’re easy things to fix.”

Too many odd-man rushes against, too many turnovers and general sloppy play is what I think Laviolette is referring to as the Rangers were outplayed by the East’s worst team.

5. “Obviously, we didn’t like how we played,” Jacob Trouba said. “You’re going to have some games like that.”

Trouba is right, every team is going to have “some games like that,” even the Rangers who have played .750 hockey through the first quarter of the season. That’s why it’s hard to do anything other than “turn the page” like Trouba also said.

The loss was one of 82, just like the other regulation losses this season to Columbus, Nashville, Dallas and Buffalo were. The only issue is when you read through the names of those teams, outside of Dallas, the Rangers clearly have an issue playing down to their opponent’s level.

6. Ottawa is in last in the conference, Columbus is in second-to-last and Buffalo is right behind Columbus. (The Rangers needed a game-tying goal with 11 seconds left in regulation and a shootout win the last time they played Columbus to avoid being 0-2 against the Blue Jackets.) Nashville has played better of later, but the Predators are unlikely to be a postseason team. The Rangers have also lost to the West’s fourth-worst Wild (a game in which the Rangers blew a three-goal lead) and barely eked out a win against the league-worst Sharks last weekend.

7. Now you could argue some of those losses have been negated by wins over Boston, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Detroit. Yes, the Rangers have come out on top against the best teams they have played (aside from Dallas), but it would be easier to stomach some of their losses if they weren’t letdown performances against the worst teams in the league.

That is about as much complaining as one can do about the Rangers right now, and it’s not even really complaining since it’s just the truth: the Rangers have not played well against bad teams.

8. To the Rangers’ credit, they played on Saturday night in Nashville, returned home to play on Sunday night at the Garden, had Monday off and then played in Ottawa the following night. Three games in four days in Tennessee, New York and Canada is not nothing.

9. It was another multi-point game for Panarin, who now has 13 of those in 24 games. Miller scored for the third time in the last four games and fourth time in the last six games, Adam Fox (who you would never know missed 11 games) picked up a point as well. That was about all the good from the game.

10. After having a back-to-back last weekend (Nashville and San Jose), the Rangers will have another this weekend in Washington D.C. and home against Los Angeles. They will play back-to-backs every weekend in December. The quick trip to play the Capitals will be followed by three straight home games and six of the next eight at the Garden. 

The Rangers had recorded at least one point in 17 of their last 19 games before the loss in Ottawa. They will look to add to their East-leading point total and avoid losing back-to-back games for the first time this season on Saturday against the Capitals.

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

After a mid-week win over Detroit and a Saturday night win in Nashville, a Sunday night home game against league-worst San Jose was set up to be a trap game for the Rangers.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. I was worried about the Rangers and their league-best record hosting the Sharks and their league-worst record. Having played the previous night in Nashville and playing for the third time in five days, I had visions of David Quinn walking out of Madison Square Garden holding his head up high with a smile on his face after knocking off his former employers. Thankfully, Artemi Panarin put my fears to rest, handed the Quinn’s Sharks another loss and pushed him a little closer to the door in San Jose.

2. Panarin produced his league-leading 12th multi-point game of the season (in just 23 games), scored his fifth career hat trick, added an assist and the Rangers won 6-5.

“He leaves you speechless sometimes,” Mika Zibanejad said of Panarin. “I couldn’t be happier having him on our team.”

Panarin is up to 35 points in 23 games and a 125-point pace over 82 games. He has never scored more than 32 goals in a season and he’s one away from being halfway to that total with more than 70 percent of the season to play.

“He’s been outstanding,” Vincent Trocheck said of Panarin. “He’s taken another step, somehow, and he was already a world-class player.”

3. In what was a wild game, the Rangers overcame two deficits, blew a one-goal lead and nearly blew a two-goal lead.

“It was loose defensively, but we can’t make excuses about that,” Trocheck said. “We have back-to-backs all the time in this league. Whether it’s a great team or a team that’s maybe not in a playoff spot, you still have to come out the same way.”

4. The Rangers’ first deficit came 3:50 into the game when Anthony Duclair undressed Jonathan Quick with a breakaway deke to give the Sharks a 1-0 lead. The former Ranger who was traded away as a 19-year-old rookie is now a 28-year-old vet, having played for seven teams within the last decade. There’s a chance he could return to the Rangers later this season as he has been a popular name tied to the team as a potential trade deadline target, and I’m all for bringing him back to where he started. 

5. Five minutes after Duclair opened the scoring, the Rangers tied it on the power play with Panarin’s first on the night — a wrist shot from the point through traffic. The Sharks regained the lead less than four minutes later, and then just 34 seconds after the Sharks scored, Panarin tied it at 2. Zibanejad scored his sixth of the season at 16:42 of the first period in what was the final goal of a five-goal first.

The Sharks got a power-play goal at 9:16 of the second to tie it at 3, and later in the period, Will Cuylle broke the tie with his first goal in 10 games (and his first point in nine).

“He’s a young player who gives everything he’s got every night,” Peter Laviolette said of Cuylle. “He’s learning, but he’s off to a good start.”

6. Jonny Brodzinski got a chance to play with Zibanejad and Chris Kreider in his latest and best attempt to stick in the NHL, and he didn’t disappoint with his second straight two-assist game. The four-point weekend and the chemistry with Zibanejad and Kreider will certainly give Brodzinski an extended look in the Rangers’ top-six.

“He had a really good training camp,” Laviolette said of Brodzinski. “He was generating lots of scoring chances, attempts, pucks at the net and doing lots of good things.”

7. The Rangers extended their lead in the third, making it 5-3 on Panarin’s third of the game, and then 6-3 on K’Andre Miller’s fourth of the season. With a three-goal lead, the remaining 6:56 seemed like a formality, especially with the Sharks as the opponent, but a couple of turnovers at the top of the offensive zone led to Sharks’ goals at 14:38 and 15:50 to cut the Rangers’ lead to 6-5. Fortunately, there was nothing more after that.

“They made it interesting in the end,” Zibanejad said. “We’ll take this win and these four points this weekend.”

8. “Give our guys a ton of credit,” Quinn said. “They came ready to play tonight and had a chance to tie it late.”

Yes, the Sharks came ready to play, allowing six goals and losing on the road for the 11th time in 12 rod games his season.

The win improved the Rangers to a ridiculous 18-4-1 on the season and 9-0-1 in their last 10 games against the Sharks. 

“It’s a good feeling,” Panarin said. “We look pretty good right now. I hope we can play this way all year.”

9. For as good as the Rangers have been this season, and they have been unbelievable, it’s hard not to think ahead to their eventual postseason berth and what type of team they will be come April. At this point, the Rangers playing in April is a given. They have a 97 percent chance to make the playoffs as of now, which represents the highest odds in the Eastern Conference. With 37 points through 23 games, playing .500 hockey for the rest of he season would give them more than enough to reach the playoffs. For now, I will try to stay in the moment and enjoy this magical run.

10. Next up is a game in Ottawa on Tuesday, and then another weekend back-to-back in Washington and home against Los Angeles. Nine games over the next 19 days before Christmas break with five of them at home and all nine in the Eastern Time Zone. After a grueling, ugly schedule over the first two months of the season, the schedule finally favors the Rangers, and so far thy have made the most of playing at home and on the East Coast. I don’t expect them to stop now.

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

The daunting three games in four days schedule sandwiched around Thanksgiving for the Rangers resulted in three wins. The Rangers won in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and then knocked off Boston in New York.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. After blowing a two-goal lead, allowing six unanswered goals and losing to Dallas 6-3 on Monday night, the Rangers bounced back with a 1-0 win in Pittsburgh. It was the Preseason Problems Game as Alexis Lafreniere’s goal 5:10 into the game stood up with Jonathan Quick making 32 saves for his second shutout in five starts as a Ranger. Those two were the ire of many Rangers fans for their late-September and early-October play, but their performance in actual, meaningful games that count have served as a reminder that the preseason is meaningless.

Quick made five power-play saves and one shorthanded save in the game, but no save was bigger than him getting a piece of Sidney Crosby’s wrister as the Penguins legend was left alone in the slot in the final minute of play. Evgeni Malkin found Crosby by himself and as a Rangers fan (and Rangers +100 money line bettor), my heart momentarily sank.

2. The Rangers had a rather quick turnaround from Wednesday night’s win to Friday’s early-afternoon game in Philadelphia. Earlier in the week, it was shocking to see the Flyers sitting in second place in the Met. Sure, they had played more games than teams right behind them, but still, it’s the Flyers, and they suck. Seeing them in second place through six weeks whether teams had games in hand on them or not is not something anyone should have expected at this point. It only took a day’s worth of the Rangers beating up on them and the rest of the division getting back into action for the Flyers to tumble to down the standings.

This one was over rather quickly. Mika Zibanejad scored just 45 seconds into the game, for his third of the season, first in November and first in 25 days.

One minute and eight seconds later, the Rangers scored again. Travis Sanheim threw the puck in front of his own net and it was as if he were wearing a Blueshirt as it was placed perfectly on Chris Kreider’s tape. Kreider banged it home to give the Rangers a 2-0 lead. MSG quickly panned to the Flyers’ bench where John Tortorella looked like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world other than behind his team’s bench.

Just under eight minutes into the second, Zibanejad scored again. Here is what I wrote about Zibanejad on Wednesday:

One of these games, Zibanejad will go off, net a hat trick and get right back to being his usual self. With the season 20 percent over, it would be nice if that happened in the near future, and no better time than this week where the Rangers will play three games in four days and five games in eight days. This is the most opportune time for Zibanejad to start finding the back of the net.

He came one shy of a hat trick, but the two-goal game was a welcome sight. In 27:41 of play against the Flyers, Zibanejad doubled his season goal total, and with a three-goal lead against this Flyers team, the remainder of the game was a formality in an eventual 3-1 win.

A day later, the Rangers were back home for the first time in nearly two weeks to host the Bruins in a battle of the Eastern Conference’s best. It was a game that drew my attention when the schedule was released in the summer, and a game that saw its attention grow exponentially over the first fifth of the season.

3. With Igor Shesterkin having played in Philadelphia, Quick was given the start in the second game of the back-to-back, and it was another quick start for the Rangers’ offense as well.

Nick Bonino scored his first goal as a Ranger when he gathered the puck near the top of the circles, spun around and wristed it past Linus Ullmark to give the Rangers a 1-0 at 5:58 of the first. Five minutes later, the Rangers extended their lead to 2-0 with Kreider picking up a rebound on the power play. The Bruins responded to the early deficit by calling timeout. The Bruins looked like nothing like advertised through the first 12-plus minutes of the game as they didn’t record their first shot until there was just 7:21 left in the period. It’s quite possible (and extremely likely) they took advantage of landing in New York in the early evening on Friday and having a night out in the city. But whatever Jim Montgomery said to them during that timeout changed their play and demeanor. The Bruins tied the game with goals 22 seconds apart. Then it was Peter Laviolette’s turn to call a timeout.

“There was a rollercoaster of emotions in the way that the game was played, and that was one of them,” Laviolette said. “To me, just to stop the game to reset, it’s now back to even, back to work.”

I figured the Rangers may collapse the way they have so many times in recent seasons with two-goal leads in game. They had just blown a two-goal lead and lost four days earlier in Dallas and it wasn’t that long ago they blew a three-goal lead and lost in Minnesota. When Erik Gustafsson went off for hooking with 1:34 to go in the first, a two-goal lead becoming a one-goal deficit seemed inevitable.

But 15 seconds after Gustafsson went off, the Bruins turned the puck over at the top of the offensive zone, Kreider fled the zone and Jacob Trouba hit Kreider in stride for a breakaway. Kreider, the last person you ever want on a breakaway, finally converted one for a shorthanded goal and the Rangers had the lead back.

“It was a great read by Jacob, ” Kreider said. “Nice pass right on the tape.”

4. The lead didn’t last long. The Bruins began the second period on the same power play and when the Rangers failed to clear the puck near the blue line, the Bruins turned it into a 3-on-1 below the top of the circles. David Pastrnak hesitated, got Quick to open his five-hole and jammed it past him to tie the game.

The game remained tied for more than 16 minutes of play, until a delayed Bruins penalty turned into a 6-on-5 for the Rangers, which turned into Jimmy Vesey’s fourth goal of the season. About three minutes later Mika Zibanejad left a drop pas for K’Andre, who walked into it with all 6-foot-5 of his body and blasted a ridiculous slap shot past Ullmark. 5-3 Rangers.

“That was back and forth, a lot of emotions probably from both teams,” Laviolette said. “I thought the guys showed a lot of resiliency.”

5. It was the best and worst game of the season. Best in terms of putting up a 7-spot on the league’s second-best defense (the Rangers entered the game first in the league in terms of goals against average) and beating the Rangers’ direct competition for the East’s 1-seed by three goals. It was the worst because of the blown two-goal, two blown leads and uneasiness of the Rangers’ own defense from the midway point of the first period through the second period.

This time the Rangers wouldn’t blow the lead though. 5-3 became 6-3 on Tyler Pitlick’s first as a Ranger. A minute later, the Bruins cut it to 6-4, but two minutes after that, Artemi Panarin slammed the door, making it 7-4, which is how it would stay. (After three straight pointless games, Panarin had a goal and two assists against the Bruins.)

6. “Doing that against a Top 2, Top 3 team in the league is always nice,” Miller said. “It shows we have a pretty good team.”

Not just a “good team” but the best team in the Eastern Conference. The Rangers lead the Met by nine points. They have lost in regulation once (Dallas) in more than five weeks. They have only twice (Dallas and Minnesota) in six weeks (and they held a multi-goal lead in both games). The Rangers started the season 2-2 and are 13-1-1 since.

7. “Our guys are going into a game expecting to win, expecting to play a certain way,” Laviolette said. “And if we do that, we can see the results. Today, I think was just a little but more challenging because of the schedule that we’ve been in.”

The schedule is something I wrote about on Wednesday:

The Rangers’ schedule has been rather odd to this point. After a pair of road games and a pair of home games to begin the season, they went on a 10-day, three-time zone road trip in which they went west (Seattle), east (Calgary), north (Edmonton), west again (Vancouver) and east again Winnipeg), They returned home for one game and then went back on the road and out of the time zone for one game in Minnesota. (Why not just play in Minnesota after Winnipeg?) Then they played three home games before having six days off. Now they are on a road trip that covers New Jersey (OK, not really a road trip), Dallas, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

When you’re winning, like the Rangers have been, it makes a frustrating and outrageous schedule less of an annoyance.

8. “I still don’t think we’ve played our best hockey yet,” Miller said, “which kind of scary and fun to say at the same time.”

I think Miller is somewhat right. The Rangers have played their best hockey, it just happened to come on opening night in Buffalo. That performance is likely to never be duplicated as it was the best and most complete effort from the Rangers in a decade. It’s scary that they are capable of that level play, and it’s even more scary that they haven’t come close to matching it and have a 15-3-1 record.

10. “We worked hard,” Laviolette said. “We worked smart to secure the two points.”

That’s all the Rangers seem to do: secure two points. Now the crazy schedule to date loosens up a bit as the Rangers remain home for two more games (Buffalo and Detroit), and then the schedule softens with back-to-back games next weekend at Nashville and home against San Jose. A lot of favorable opportunities over the next week to secure two points.

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!