ELIMINATED!

It was fitting that on a night when the Rangers actually played one of their better games of the season, it was their goaltending that let them down. Well, at least they had more than 10 shots on goal.

How the mighty have fallen. To think that only two years ago the Blueshirts won the Presidents' Trophy and advanced to the Eastern Conference finals for the second time in three seasons. In spite of what the analytics community was saying, they were legitimate Cup contenders, even if their window was one of the shortest in franchise history. 

And now, for the second straight season, there will be no playoff games at Madison Square Garden. The Rangers were officially eliminated from postseason contention last night in Toronto. They are currently second from the bottom in the NHL standings. So much for "No Quit in New York." I hope J.T. Miller kept the receipts for those T-shirts. Maybe he can get a Happy Meal for them.

As you probably noticed, I haven't been writing much about the Rangers this season for two reasons: One, the Knicks have been a far better story; and two, there's only so much bile I can spit up. Watching this team brings new meaning to the term self abuse.

There are many culprits in this tragedy, but none more egregious than J.T. Miller. Captain Clunker is now sadly part of two of the worst trades in Rangers history: the first was when he was dealt to the Lightning in 2018 for a package that included Brett Howden; the second was when he was reacquired last year from the Canucks for Filip Chytil and a first round pick. Jesus, talk about double dipping. 

With a few rare exceptions, Miller has been brutal this season. How brutal? Without him in the lineup, the Rangers are 7-5-2; with him in the lineup, they're 21-30-7. Since his return from I.R., he has no goals and only 4 assists in seven games. During that span, New York is 1-5-1. Prior to that, they had won their last three games.

This wasn't what the Rangers envisioned when they brought him back to Broadway. Clearly, something is wrong. If he's injured, he shouldn't be playing; and if he isn't injured, there's no excuse for his performance. Either way, there's no justification for keeping a player making $8 million AAV through 2030 beyond this season. Chris Drury may not like retaining dead cap space on the books, but in this instance, he really has no other choice. He must buy out Miller's contract over the summer and rid the organization of an albatross that will cripple his efforts at rebuilding the roster.

Here's what a potential buy out for Miller would look like:

2026-27: $2.92m

2027-28: $5.42m

2028-29: $5.42m

2029-30: $2.92m

2030-31: $1.92m

2031-32: $1.92m

2032-33: $1.92m

2033-34: $1.92m

At first glance, this may seem like a lot of money to eat, but with the salary cap scheduled to go from $95.5 million to $104 million next season and $113.5 million the following year, it's not as bad as it looks. By year five the cap hit would be less than what a bottom six forward would cost. The alternative is keeping a subpar player on an aging contract who will only take valuable minutes away from a younger, more promising prospect. Better for Drury to cut his losses than to continue throwing good money after bad. This would be the no brainer of the decade.

Speaking of no brainers, it is imperative that the Rangers find out what they have in their pipeline. Continuing to dress players like Taylor Raddysh and Conor Sheary when you have players in Hartford that could be called up and looked at is absurd. With ten games to go in the season, Drury and Mike Sullivan need to give as much ice time as possible to these players.

To some extent, they've already begun to do that. Tye Kartye (who was claimed off waivers from the Kraken) has been a pleasant surprise, scoring 3 goals and 6 assists in 14 games with New York, and averaging 14 minutes per game playing on the third line. Jaroslav Chmelar is another young player who has 2 goals in 18 games. And last night, Adam Sykora made his NHL debut.

But the biggest, most pleasant surprise has come courtesy of the top six. Gabe Perrault has 4 goals and 9 assists this month; Mika Zibanejad, with 32 goals and 37 assists this season, is playing his best hockey since 2022-23; and Alexis Lafreniere has 11 goals and 10 assists since Artemi Panarin was traded to the Kings in January. Five of those goals have come on the power play. Over the last 13 games, the trio has 20 goals and 26 assists. In an otherwise lost season, they've been one of the few bright spots on this team.

Vincent Trocheck - who was almost traded - has 3 goals and 6 assists since the deadline. If Drury doesn't get a good enough offer for him over the summer, he should keep him. A 2C making $5.6 million is very manageable in this league, especially one who averages 60 points per season and wins 57 percent of his face offs.

Look, there's no way to sugar coat this. The Rangers are a bad team, and they will likely be a bad team for the foreseeable future. The best thing Drury can do is not make the same mistakes his predecessor made by taking short cuts. He needs to build through the draft, develop his young prospects, and when appropriate, make smart trades. That's the way most successful teams have done it. 

It's the way the Rangers did it under Emile Francis and Craig Patrick. 

For the Rangers, the Inevitable Becomes Reality

Come on now, you didn't really think the Rangers were going to win out, did you? A team that hasn't had a three-game win streak since mid-November was somehow going to miraculously run the table while the Montreal Canadiens simultaneously were going to lose out? 

That team? 

Seriously? 

Right, and your kid's gonna get a personal visit from the Easter Bunny next Sunday. 

THE Easter Bunny. 

You heard it here first.

Throughout this hellscape of a season, the Blueshirts have had numerous opportunities to take charge of their own destiny and they failed to do so every time. You can point all you want to the horrific December they had - and it was pretty horrific - but there was still plenty of time to climb out of the hole they dug. 

The talent was there. Please spare me the bullshit about how they suddenly got old. Teams don't go from winning the Presidents' Trophy one season to the retirement home the next. That's not how it works. True, several key players had off years, but even allowing for that, the talent on this roster was still better than the one that beat it out for the last wild card spot; in fact, it was better than both wild card rosters.

But then talent was never the problem, was it? To quote former head coach Gerard Gallant, "I love to have talent, but you love to have a work ethic." Tragically for this group, work ethic proved to be its kryptonite. In a league that values grit over glitter, the Rangers were simply unwilling to pay the price to win. The last two games epitomized how their season has gone. Against an Islanders team that was badly outclassed, they had their way with them; against a Hurricanes team that is a genuine playoff contender, they were exposed. Poker players can bluff all they want, but not hockey players. You either have a Royal Flush in your hand or you have a pair of deuces. There's no in-between.

So where do we go from here? For starters, don't expect Chris Drury to go anywhere. James Dolan may not like how this team unravelled this season, but from everything we've heard coming out of the Garden, his job appears to be safe - for now. That's more than can be said for Peter Laviolette. Frankly, I would be shocked if he wasn't relieved of his duties shortly after the season is over.

I've said it before, and it bears repeating, Laviolette doesn't deserve all the blame here. As I wrote back in March, "Coaches can scream till they're blue in the face, but the last time I checked, they're not the ones wearing the jerseys."

But they do make out the lineup cards. And as long as we're being totally honest here, it was Laviolette's refusal to hold his veteran players accountable that proved to be his undoing. The power play was a case in point. It was painfully obvious that the first unit was struggling most of the season, especially down the stretch. But rather than swap out units, he simply moved a few players around, which was the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Why Laviolette was this stubborn, we may never know. At this point, it's academic. Barring a last-minute change of heart - doubtful - there will be a new coaching staff behind the bench next season. Whoever it is better be able to motivate this core or next time it'll be Drury who gets the pink slip. 

And speaking of Drury, picking a new coach isn't the only thing on his plate. It's clear this core has some major issues that cannot be resolved with a mere pep talk or shouting match. As I also wrote in that piece back in March, "Scotty Bowman would have a hard time coaching this group." You can fault Drury for the manner in which he moved out Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba, but you can't fault him for realizing that both players had outlived their usefulness to the team. And in the cap era, the Rangers simply couldn't afford to keep either of them. If anything, Drury should've played hardball with Trouba in July rather than let things simmer the way they did over the course of the season.

But that's water over the dam now. Drury doesn't have the luxury of indulging in hindsight. He has more "dead weight" on this roster to contend with. Chris Kreider will almost certainly be the next player shown the door. But where? The thirteen-year veteran has played his entire career with the Rangers. But his 26 points in 66 games was a career low for him. Moving him will not be easy, especially since he has a 15-team No Trade Clause. If Drury can find a team willing to take on his entire $6.5 million contract, he can use the cap savings to go shopping for an impact player that can move the needle on this team; someone like Sam Bennett, who's an unrestricted free agent after this season. 

Then there's Brady Tkachuk. While the Ottawa Senators have publicly said they're not interested in trading him, perhaps a package of Alexis Lafreniere, Gabe Perrault, Brennan Othmann and a first rounder - which could conceivably become a lottery pick if the Rangers lose out - might be enough to change their minds. Imagine a line with both Sam Bennett and Brady Tkachuk on it. Hey, a fella can dream, can't he?

But before Drury does any of this, he has some unfinished business at home. Calvin de Haan, the defenseman he acquired from the Colorado Avalanche for Ryan Lindgren and Jimmy Vesey, apparently wasn't too thrilled with being benched the final 15 games of the season, in which the Rangers went 6-8-1, a fact he emphasized in front of the beat reporters yesterday, and later tweeted about. de Haan isn't the only player who has a beef about the way he was utilized, or underutilized. Zac Jones was benched in favor of Carson Soucy, even though it was painfully obvious Soucy was having problems in his own end since his arrival from the Vancouver Canucks at the trade deadline. And then there was Perrault, the highly-touted prospect Drury was forced to burn a year of his ELC in order to keep him from going back to Boston College. For some strange reason, he was a healthy scratch the last couple of games. Thankfully, the kid never said anything about it.

Yes, this will be a busy offseason for Chris Drury. His team shit the bed; it's on him to clean the sheets.

Rangers Have No One But Themselves to Blame If They Miss the Playoffs

It's come down to this: the New York Rangers currently sit two points behind the Montreal Canadiens for the last wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. Each team has seven games left in the regular season. While the Rangers own the tie breaker by virtue of having more regulation wins, they have the tougher schedule. If the Habs go just 5-2, the Blueshirts would have to go 6-1 to make the playoffs. A herculean task to be sure, but one which they brought on themselves. 

There's no easy way to put this: if the Rangers fail to make the playoffs, they will have no but themselves to blame. Throughout the season, they have had more than enough opportunities to move up in the standings. Having gone through a hellish December in which they went 3-12-0, they began to turn things around in January. After an inspiring 2-1 win over the Vegas Golden Knights on January 11, New York had finally clawed its way back to the .500 mark.

But they were never able to build any momentum. They'd win two in a row, then lose a game; they'd win another two in a row, followed by another loss; they'd win two more in a row, only to lose three in a row. The last time the Rangers won three games in a row was back on November 19 against the Vancouver Canucks. Their longest win streak of the season was four games back in October. How bad is that? The Nashville Predators - who with 62 points have been an even bigger disappointment than the Rangers - have had two four-game win streaks and one three-game win streak this season.

But it's the manner in which this team loses games that is the most disconcerting. Since the beginning of the new year, the Rangers have lost seven times when they've held leads or been tied in the third period. 

January 7 vs the Dallas Stars at the Garden. The Rangers led 4-3 with three minutes to go in regulation when K'Andre Miller coughed up the puck in his zone. The Stars tied the game and won it in overtime. 

January 14 @ the Colorado Avalanche. The Rangers were clinging to a 2-1 lead late in the third period when Igor Shesterkin gave up a rebound that Arturi Lehkonen pounced on to tie the game. The Avs went on to win it in OT.

January 19 @ the Montreal Canadiens. Once again the Rangers had a third period lead; once again they gave up the tying goal and lost in overtime. 

January 26 vs the Avalanche at the Garden. The Rangers fought back from a two-goal deficit to tie the game with five minutes to go in the third period. Cale Makar then took a penalty with less than three minutes to go in regulation. The Rangers not only didn't score on the ensuing power play, but Will Borgen's ill-advised, cross-ice pass in the offensive zone was intercepted by Makar, who then sped down the ice to set up the game-winning goal with 15 seconds left.

March 5 vs the Washington Capitals at the Garden. In one of their most inspiring efforts of the season, the Rangers led the Caps 2-1 with just over 11 minutes to go in the third period, when Zac Jones took a hooking penalty. Alex Ovechkin scored on the power play to tie the game and Tom Wilson won it in OT.

March 8 @ the Ottawa Senators. This one hurt. The Rangers had a two-goal lead with 10 minutes to go in regulation. The Sens scored twice to force overtime and won it on a turnover by K'Andre Miller. 

March 28 @ the Anaheim Ducks. This one REALLY hurt. The Rangers led by two goals twice in the game, yet still couldn't hold on for the win. The Ducks scored the game-tying goal off a 4 on 2 with less than two minutes to go in regulation, and then went on to win it in OT.

Think about it: if the Rangers had just two of those squandered points back, they'd currently be above the cut line in the wild card race. If they had four of them back, they'd be in the driver's seat right now. 

This team has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory so many times throughout the 2024-25 season, it's a wonder they're still mathematically alive for a playoff spot at all. And when you look at their remaining games - @ the Devils, vs the Lightning, vs the Flyers, @ the Islanders, @ the Hurricanes, @ the Panthers, and vs the Lightning - it's hard to see how they get in, especially when you consider who the Canadiens have left to play: vs the Flyers, @ the Predators, vs the Red Wings, @ the Senators, @ the Maple Leafs, vs the Blackhawks & vs the Hurricanes.

But regardless of what happens over the next few days, the Rangers may have found themselves a budding, young star in Gabe Perrault. The 23rd pick in the 2023 Entry Draft looked good against the Minnesota Wild the other night. Twice he came close to picking up an assist. He may not be the fastest skater in the league, but his passing skills were on full display in that game. Peter Laviolette was wise to put him in the top six. With so many aging forwards on this roster, it is incumbent on the organization to develop what young talent they have, especially given how Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere were brought along early in their careers. Indeed, if, as expected, Chris Drury unloads Chris Kreider over the summer, and then somehow convinces Mika Zibanejad to waive his NMC, the Rangers might have one of the younger lineups in the NHL next season.

But that's next season. We still have seven games left in this one. Anything can happen.

Yogi Berra used to say, "It ain't over till it's over."

Then again, Bob Dylan once sang, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

One of them is right.