TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — Past the midway point of the NHL season, confidence is not in high supply for the New York Rangers, losers of four in a row and seven of their past eight games since returning from the holiday break.
“We’re definitely a little bit of a fragile group right now,” defenseman Braden Schneider said. “The guys know we’re a good team. We believe that we have the ability to win games, and guys still believe in here that we’re good. We’ve just got to make sure that we’re not letting the small things that happen in a game get to us.”
Small things are digging a big hole for the Rangers as they look to make up ground in a competitive Eastern Conference with all 16 teams separated by just 15 points in the standings going into play Tuesday night. They’re last in points percentage with a record of 20-21-6 and are running out of time to become legitimate playoff contenders before it’s too late.
“It’s not fun to lose,” said center Mika Zibanejad, who has scored six goals in five games and leads the team with 18. “We’re trying to look for answers, trying to find answers. Maybe it doesn’t look it at times, I understand that, but we’re trying to do everything we can to try to get a win.”
Coach Mike Sullivan after his team’s most recent loss Monday night at home to Seattle said, “The answers are inside our locker room” and tried to push that message before practice Tuesday. A two-time Stanley Cup champion from his time with Pittsburgh, Sullivan is preaching positivity at arguably the toughest point of his first season on the job.
“We’ve got to bring an unwavering level of enthusiasm to what we do every day if we’re going to ultimately pull ourselves out of this,” Sullivan said. “We’re not going to dwell on anything. We’re not going to get overwhelmed by circumstance or the noise.”
The noise is that the March 6 trade deadline is less than two months away, with a lengthy pause in February for the Olympics in between. Winger Artemi Panarin, New York’s leading scorer every season since signing as a free agent in 2019, does not have a contract beyond June 30, turns 35 on Oct. 31 and could be the first big-money player out the door.
With 14 games remaining before the deadline, it’s an uphill climb to push general manager Chris Drury into buying or standing pat rather than selling and beginning the process of retooling an aging roster.
“We still have a chance to compete and just climb in the standings,” defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov said. “We’ve got to do it now because after the Olympic break, that would be maybe a little late, so we need it now, (and) we’ve got to be desperate every single night.”
A 10-2 loss at Boston on national television Saturday was a humbling experience, but most of the defeats have not been so lopsided. Rather, they have come from mistakes — an ill-timed line change or a missed assignment — compounding on each other and leading to goals against.
“I don’t think it’s for a lack of effort,” captain J.T. Miller said. “Just mistakes, and we talked about playing smart, as well as hard. Just some things we need to clean up.”
The absences of franchise goaltender Igor Shesterkin and top defenseman Adam Fox have certainly contributed to this skid, as players like Schneider, Gavrikov and nearly-40-year-old Jonathan Quick have been pressed into bigger roles with heavier workloads. They are not close to being back on the ice, according to Sullivan, who does not want to use injuries as an excuse.
“We haven’t won a lot lately, and when you have key players out that help you in that regard, I just think that’s what you’re fighting against,” Sullivan said. “These guys are human beings, and they have emotions and feelings and things like that that you have to try and manage.”
With the solution needing to come from within, veterans — even if they’re short on words to explain the situation — are hoping they can lead the Rangers out of this quagmire.
“There’s no answer,” center Vincent Trocheck said. “It really is just trying to come together as a group, have some enthusiasm, try to have fun with the game and then get better at the things that we’re doing wrong.”
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