The ‘loaded question’ hanging over a Rangers team on the brink of some miserable history
The 2024-25 New York Rangers are face to face with the very real possibility of not making the playoffs this season.
Sitting six points out of the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with six games to go, beginning with the Lightning Monday night at Madison Square Garden, the Blueshirts will probably have to win out if they want to have any hope of finishing above the cutoff line come April 18.
They are in serious jeopardy of becoming just the fourth Presidents’ Trophy winners in NHL history to miss the postseason the following year.
How in the world did the once Resilient Rangers get to this point?
“Yeah, that’s a loaded question,” Vincent Trocheck told The Post after an optional morning skate on Monday. “There’s a lot that goes into it, I guess. I don’t think you could really — we could talk for hours about it. I don’t know if you could pinpoint any one or two things.”
The fact that the Rangers are even in this wild-card snail race, after going 4-15 at one point and plummeting to the bottom of the Metropolitan Division, said a lot more about their surrounding competition.
They probably would be in a much better position right now if they played even halfway decent over the last month or so. Instead, the Rangers left points on the table in three overtime losses, went on four-game and three-game losing skids and did things like blow a two-goal third-period lead to the Ducks.
The Canadiens, on the other hand, are more than deserving of their position in the second wild card.
A 2-1 win over the Predators Sunday night extended Montreal’s win streak to five games, over which they not only defeated the defending Stanley Cup champions twice, but also earned three comeback victories.
The Canadiens, with executive vice president of hockey operations and former Rangers general manager Jeff Gorton at the helm, have all but left the Rangers in their dust.
“If you would’ve asked me this summer, I’d say yes,” Rangers head coach Peter Laviolette said when asked if he was surprised the team was in this position. “If you’re asking me on the daily, if you’re asking me from yesterday to today, the answer is no. We need to win more hockey games. It’s not something that I woke up this morning and was surprised by. We’ve been in this position all year. We’ve been outside the line, we’ve been just inside the line and it doesn’t surprise me at this point.
“But, we certainly are disappointed to be in this position. We got to win hockey games. That’s all we can do right now is take on [Monday night] and look to get those two points and put them in the column and chase it down.”
Comparatively speaking, the Rangers have a much more difficult remaining schedule than the Canadiens do. Considering the fact that they haven’t been able to string three wins together since mid-November, the chances of the Blueshirts winning out are slim.
They would join the 1991-92/1992-93 Rangers as the second team in the organization’s history to win the Presidents Trophy and then fail to qualify for the playoffs the following year.
Also on that list includes the 2006-07/2007-08 Buffalo Sabres and the 2013-14/2014-15 Boston Bruins.
“You got to control what you can control just like always,” Trocheck said. “You got to do whatever you can to win as many games as you can. It’s not in our hands what the other teams do, but you never know. They lose a couple games and pressure kicks in. It’s right there, but we have to do our jobs, too.”
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