Are the Rangers back?

The New York Rangers are 4-1-1 to start 2025, something many didn’t think possible as recently as two weeks ago. The key has been improved play from the top-six and a recent surge in defensive play all around. Add in better goaltending–they were below a .900 SV% for most of December–and you have a Rangers team that is winning games. But are the Rangers back? Or is this just a flash in the pan before inevitable pain brings us back down to Earth?

As Luker points out, there are three big factors to the recent Rangers run to start 2025. The first is the top-six, both at 5v5 and on the powerplay. The main driver here is Mika Zibanejad, who has been shooting far more and is seemingly more confident. The second is the goaltending, which hit a poorly timed blip in December. The third is the defense pairs and overall team defense.

Is Mika Zibanejad awake?

We don’t need stats to see that Mika Zibanejad may have finally awoken, as he’s been far more engaged and actually winning races to the puck and creating offense. His 2-4-6 line in 6 games to start the calendar year came on the heels of an 8 game pointless streak.

What’s different about this streak compared to Zibanejad’s previous 2-4-6 in 6 games from Nov 30-Dec 11 is the way Zibanejad has been doing it. Prior streaks like this have been misleading, as Zibanejad was mostly a passenger who happened to capitalize with points. Now he’s the driver, shooting more, getting to loose pucks, and creating offense. Points are a byproduct of Zibanejad’s play, finally.

Is this because Zibanejad is no longer deferring to the injured Chris Kreider? Possibly. Or maybe they finally had a long break at the end of December to have a full reset. Either way, if the Rangers are truly back, then Zibanejad will be at the forefront of their resurgence.

Improved goaltending

Normally, goaltending is the least of the Rangers’ concerns. Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick may be the best duo in the NHL, even if the Rangers’ record isn’t reflective of this. Every team sees their goalies hit a slump, and this is what fueled part of their December woes. The Rangers put up a .873 SV% in December, a far cry from their .927 SV% in October and their .907 SV% in November.

Not all of this is on Shesterkin and Quick, mind you. The overall team defense was lousy at best, with braindead plays and turnovers winding up in the back of their net.

The difference between December and all other slumps is that this was poorly timed with the Rangers slump, thus the goalies weren’t able to pick the Rangers up. Given Shesterkin’s stint on IR, there’s a possibility he was playing injured and needed that extra time to get healthy.

Either way, the goaltending is better. Not perfect–they have a .900 SV% in January thus far–but better.

Team defense has been far better

The Rangers were an odd team in December. If you looked solely at possession numbers, you’d think the Rangers were about a .500 hockey team in that stretch. They weren’t good, but they weren’t horrific either. What fueled the horrific play was the aforementioned brain dead plays and miscommunications that led to goals against.

The focus on defensive hate focused primarily on K’Andre Miller, mostly because Jacob Trouba had already been traded. Miller hadn’t been good, but the amount of vitriol received was a tad extreme. If you listened to Live From the Blue Seats from last week, we went into why this happened, and why the fault should also have been on the center(s) as well.

Note: JL is working on clipping that segment now. When it’s ready, I’ll include it here.

There are two improvements by the Rangers here. The first, as Luker mentioned above, is that Will Borgen appears to be fitting in well with Miller. Whether this is short lived remains to be seen, but I am ready to eat my words on Borgen if this continues. A strong second pair makes the world of a difference for the Blueshirts, especially when that pair is deployed as the shutdown pair.

The third pair of Urho Vaakanainen and Braden Schneider has been marginally better, which helps as well.

But the important aspect is the center help in the defensive zone that has finally arrived. Defense is more than just the guys who are labeled “defensemen” in the lineup. As discussed on Live From the Blue Seats, the forwards, specifically the center, are part of the system too.

When a defenseman is following his man, and an opponent circles to the front of the net (properly vacated based on the system as the defenseman follows his man), it’s on the center to fill in that space and take that man in front. It wasn’t happening before, but it appears to be happening now. It’s all about heads on a swivel and ensuring high danger areas are covered. That’s the goal of Peter Laviolette’s defensive zone system.

Are the Rangers back? Possibly, but there’s still more to do

It’s nice to see that, perhaps, the Rangers are back and are poised to make a big run. But this is simply a 5 game sample where the Rangers went 3-1-1. That one loss was a defensive nightmare, and they blew a 3-0 lead in the OT loss. Process is important, and we will never ignore it, but sometimes it’s more important to just see a few in the win column.

The schedule doesn’t get easier for the Rangers. Colorado is good and Utah is surprisingly decent as they close out this road trip. They have a travel disaster going from Utah to MSG to Montreal in a four day span as well. Going .500 in that stretch is normally acceptable, especially since Montreal has been much better and Columbus is in the playoff picture right now. But for the Rangers to truly be back, they probably need a minimum of six points in that span.

After these four games, the Rangers then face Ottawa, Philly, Colorado, Carolina, at Boston, Vegas, Boston, Pittsburgh, and at Columbus before the Four Nations break. Six wins or 12 points probably isn’t enough in that stretch of games, but it’s the bare minimum. The Rangers will need to beat some good teams, as they squandered the easy part of their schedule.

It’s about banking points now, no matter how they come. The Rangers are, on paper, better than all six teams they are chasing for the wild card. They also have games in hand on most of those teams and are just four points out. Of the 13 games between now and the break, seven are against teams ahead of them in the wild card hunt, plus an eighth if you include the Flyers. Going 8-0-0 in that stretch isn’t realistic, but they will need to be pretty close to it to make up ground.

There’s a ton of work left before we can truly say the Rangers are back. They are laying the ground work for sure, but they need points and they need timely, situational wins over teams ahead of them. The next four weeks will make or break the Rangers season.