The Rangers stumbled a bit through one of the softer parts of their 2024-25 schedule, going 2-2 against bottom-tier clubs — the Penguins, Kraken, Blackhawks and Sabres — at a time when the team could’ve used a win streak to feel good about.
Wrapping it up with a 3-2 victory in Buffalo on Wednesday night, the Blueshirts who spoke after the game echoed the same sentiment.
The focus now is on stringing the wins together and going on a run that will make up ground in the Metropolitan Division standings.
“It hurts any time you put a stinker up at home ice. It’s not good, especially the way things have been going for us,” Adam Fox said, referencing the Rangers’ dismal 2-1 loss to the last-place Blackhawks on Monday. “We’ve tried to keep the morale high and that good energy. We want to string together a couple now. Got to start with one.
“Definitely coming into this game [against the Sabres], it was two teams who were just looking for a win, and I thought we battled to get that. Just got to go home and take care of some business, too.”
This was certainly a missed opportunity, however, considering the gauntlet the Rangers will have to get through to finish this month.
Their schedule bounces between the top and bottom of the league before it progressively gets harder as they inch closer to the holidays.
Following a back-to-back slate against the No. 7-ranked Kings and the 18th-ranked Blues, the Rangers face the last-place Predators before they play four top-10 clubs over their last five games of December.
The other team? The always-competitive Lightning.
The Rangers need to finish the month strong to remain in the postseason mix.
If the playoffs started Thursday, they would be the first wild-card team in the Eastern Conference with 31 points.
For a club that was perched at the top of the division for nearly the entirety of last season, it’s certainly not where it aspires to be.
Lately, the wins haven’t been pretty and the losses have been ugly. That is not lost on the players or on second-year head coach Peter Laviolette.
The Rangers still are trying to get back on track in both their game and their season.
Going .500 over the past six games may be better than the five-game losing streak that came just before it.
It’s a starting point the Rangers hope they can build on despite the tough road ahead.
“In a certain way, yeah [it doesn’t matter how the wins come], but I think we’ve played some good hockey at times,” Mika Zibanejad said. “The Seattle game, I thought we played better than the result, and we get nothing out of it. [The Buffalo game], I thought we played good, and we get two points. You want to find a balance between being too greedy about everything being perfect and you win all the games to not being satisfied by the result or the effort.
“Find a balance, find a mix of that. We got it done [Wednesday night], and that’s good.”