WASHINGTON \u2013 The Rangers wrap up their pre-Christmas schedule Tuesday night against the Washington Capitals, and with the NHL off the next three days for the Christmas break, it\u2019s time to take stock of where Mike Sullivan\u2019s team is, and what its prospects are heading into the next calendar year.<\/p>\n
At this point, those prospects seem murky, at best.<\/p>\n
Entering Tuesday, the Rangers were 18-16-4, one point below the playoff cut line. So a win, and the right results in other games, might have been enough to lift them into a wild-card spot at the break. But they\u2019ve played more games than any other team in the East, so even if that was the case, it might be deceiving.<\/p>\n
Of course, with still more than half the season to be played, there\u2019s plenty of time for the Blueshirts to pick things up after the break, win some games, and secure a playoff spot. But up to this point, they haven\u2019t shown that they have what it takes to rise above the pack. An optimist might say they\u2019re 50-50 to get in. A realist might put their odds at a little less than that.<\/p>\n
Naturally, the Rangers themselves tend to be more optimistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expect a bit more from ourselves and the results,\u2019\u2019 defenseman Braden Schneider said at Tuesday\u2019s morning skate. \u201cBut I think, all in all, we’re working toward the right direction, and we\u2019ve just got to make sure that we keep a belief. Because I do think we believe we have a group that can do well in this room\u2026 We do have a belief in this locker room that we are a good team.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, they were without their captain, J.T. Miller, on injured reserve with an upper-body injury, and their No. 1 defenseman and top power-play point man, Adam Fox, on long-term injured reserve, also with an upper-body injury. They\u2019ve also been dealing with some kind of virus running through their locker room, which caused them to be without Artemi Panarin for one game, and young forwards Gabe Perreault and Matt Rempe for another.<\/p>\n
But other teams have dealt with injuries and illness too. Better teams have better depth, though, and are better able to get results even while missing good players.<\/p>\n
Fox is expected to come off LTIR and return when the Rangers resume their schedule Saturday at UBS Arena against the Islanders. That will certainly help the power play, which should help the offense overall. In the 27 games he played, the power play scored 20.9% of the time (13-for-62) with him as the primary point man. It was 13.8% (4-for-29) without him going into Tuesday.<\/p>\n
But the Jericho native\u2019s return alone won\u2019t be enough to make them a playoff team.<\/p>\n
No, to do that, they are going to need to find a way to score more goals. Their 2.5 average goals scored per game was tied for last in the league entering Tuesday. It\u2019s tough to win when you can\u2019t score.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s kept them in the hunt to this point has been their excellent goaltending\u00a0and good defense. They may not score a lot, but they don\u2019t give up many goals, either (their 2.68 goals-allowed-per game is seventh-fewest in the league).<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our defensive game has been pretty solid, and that was something going into the season that we felt was an opportunity for us to build more of an identity around that,\u2019\u2019 Sullivan said at the skate. \u201cI think the guys have bought into the defensive concept that we’ve tried to put in place here. We have two excellent goaltenders (Igor Shesterkin and Jonathan Quick), and those guys make timely saves for us night in, and night out.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Sullivan, who\u2019s in his first year coaching the team, was asked if the team is roughly where he expected it to be at this point, after having to adapt to his new systems and philosophies in training camp.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that’s a tough question to answer,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cI went into this experience excited about the possibility of where this team could go, and I’m still excited about it. And so that hasn’t changed. I think this first part of the season, we’ve learned a lot about the group, and we’re trying to go through this journey together to try to become the best version of ourselves.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
What he\u2019s learned is that his team needs to score more. What he doesn\u2019t know is whether the best version of his team will be enough to get into the playoffs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tColin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 The Rangers wrap up their pre-Christmas schedule Tuesday night against the Washington Capitals, and with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5111],"tags":[2025,5,3328,35,5190,5193,4,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-371806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-rangers","8":"tag-early","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-rangers","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkrangers","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-rangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115771087529187105","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}