Rangers join infamous club by missing playoffs

With their 7-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, the New York Rangers were officially eliminated from playoff contention for the 2024-25 NHL season. It is not a surprise given the way they have played this season.

It is a surprise given the preseason expectations as well as the fact they finished the 2023-24 season with the NHL's best record.

That one-year regression is so significant that it puts them in a rather infamous club in the modern NHL era — teams to win the Presidents' Trophy (best regular-season record in the league) and then miss the playoffs entirely the following season.

The 2024-25 Rangers are just the fourth team to ever experience that sort of 180 in the standings. 

They join a list that also includes the 1992-93 Rangers, the 2008-09 Buffalo Sabres and the 2014-15 Boston Bruins.

If you are a Rangers fan and want to find a silver lining in all of this, it might the fact the 1992-93 Rangers bounced back one year later and not only won the Presidents' Trophy again, but also won the franchise's first Stanley Cup since 1940. 

But for the Rangers to follow that blueprint, they would need to undergo some significant changes this offseason. This roster is severely flawed and is not close to serious contention as currently constructed. Even last year's team probably overachieved as it was carried almost entirely by elite goaltending from Igor Shesterkin and a dominant power play. 

This year, the goaltending was not quite as good, the power play went from one of the best in the NHL to one of the worst and they did not have enough elsewhere on the roster to make up for it. 

The Rangers have been a sub-par five-on-five and defensive team for several years, only to have the goaltending and power play continue to mask those flaws. The goaltending and power play did not mask it this season.

The biggest issue the Rangers have to address is on their defense, which is consistently one of the worst in the league at suppressing scoring chances and shots. They lack mobility and players who can efficiently move the puck up the ice, and outside of Adam Fox, there is not a standout player anywhere in the unit. Even worse, almost all of that unit is under contract for next season and beyond. 

The Rangers have also failed to develop almost all of their young forward talent, and they had major leadership issues all season after spending the offseason trying to trade captain Jacob Trouba, and then attempted to trade forward Chris Kreider, the longest-tenured member of the roster. Trouba was eventually traded, while Kreider is going to be in the rumor mill again this offseason. 

The Rangers' started a rebuild back in 2018 in the hopes they could bring the Stanley Cup back to Broadway. While the team got close with a couple of Eastern Conference Final appearances in recent years, the team has simply never had the feel of a championship contender. This season only further proved that.