The New York Rangers are in a tailspin for the second consecutive season, with the latest setback this year coming in an 8-4 shellacking by the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday.

That drubbing came on home ice, where the Rangers are a brutal 5-13-4 to this point in the season, and comes just two games after they were flattened 10-2 by the Boston Bruins over the weekend.

New York was overwhelmed in the opening frame against Ottawa, and went to the locker room for the first intermission down 4-0, making any chance for a comeback victory a long shot. “Our start is not great at all, obviously,” centre Mike Zibanejad told reporters after the game. “We just dig ourselves a hole, and it’s tough enough to win as it is in this league, and you spot the other team four goals, you’re not making it much easier.”

Forward J.T. Miller was a bit less reserved than Zibanejad after the game. “No s—,” he said when asked if it was difficult to recover from an early deficit. “I’d like to not be down 4-0 after the first, but after that we responded well. Played with some pride after that.”

The Rangers own a minus-18 goal differential on their current five-game losing skid. As the results continue to get worse, the conversations are getting more difficult in the locker room.

“Early on this season, we lost games, but I thought the effort was there,” Zibanejad said. “I’m not saying the effort [isn’t there now], but our game isn’t. I thought we played better, we deserved better early on [in the season], but right now, we don’t. And that’s a tough pill to swallow.”

The Rangers have won just two of their past 11 games to fall to the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings.

“I just think when you’re going through the struggles we’re going through, your confidence isn’t at an all-time high, especially early on in the game,” head coach Mike Sullivan said afterwards about the team’s slow start. “It can affect the mindset of the group. And that’s been our challenge, trying to find a way to keep some resilience, keep a competitive spirit, enthusiasm, any adjective you want to use.”

This mid-season collapse mirrors the struggles the team went through a season ago. After a strong 12-4-1 start through the middle of November, the Rangers went ice-cold for a stretch over almost two months, going 5-16-0 over their next 21 games to plummet out of a playoff spot.

The free fall this season has led to fans chanting “Fire Drury” in the stands during Wednesday night’s game, targeting team president and general manager Chris Drury, who oversaw a team that made trips to the Eastern Conference Finals in two of his first three seasons, but is in the midst of a thoroughly disappointing campaign for the second year in a row.

One potential move to help get the team going in the right direction would be to ship star forward Artemi Panarin out to acquire prospects or younger players. Panarin is an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.

A potential trade will have some roadblocks, despite the fact that Panarin has led the Rangers in scoring in six consecutive seasons. Panarin has a full no-trade clause, and at 34 and seeking a new deal, a potential new team will have to contend with giving an aging player a new contract after giving up assets to acquire him.

Trades will certainly be on the table to inject more youth and long-term hope into the lineup, but it will not be easy to right the ship in New York.

“We’ve run through the gamut of emotions here, trying to right this thing and get it going the right direction,” said Sullivan. “And we’ll continue to try to solve it. There’s no easy answers. We’ve got to work hard. We’ve got to work together. We’ve got to stick together. We’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to compete together. And that’s what we’re going to do.”