Chris Drury said on Friday that the balance of selling off the Rangers’ pending UFAs in the past week while also bringing in some players who could help was a delicate one. The GM made it clear that he wanted to reward his team for getting up off the mat in the last two months to get back into the playoff race.
The team did not give the heartiest thank you to its boss in the first game after the trade deadline. This is a huge weekend for the Rangers, facing the two teams just ahead of them in the two wild-card spots, and it started off with a severe disappointment.
The 4-3 overtime loss to the Senators in Ottawa on Saturday afternoon was a blown game due to the 3-1 Rangers lead with 10 minutes left in the third, then a 3-2 lead inside of three minutes to go. Brady Tkachuk’s second of the game 33 seconds into OT ended it.
The bigger issue aside from handing two points to the Senators and taking only one out of the game was how the Rangers played throughout. They were by far the less engaged team, taking five penalties and looking a step slow all day. Igor Shesterkin didn’t come up big on the tying or winning goals but this would have been a blowout if not for him.
The Rangers didn’t defend the front of their net well at all and the Sens’ clear game plan was to exploit the area right in front of Shesterkin. There was plenty of traffic, lots of deflections and, on both Senators’ third-period goals, goal-mouth scrambles that produced results.
Now the Rangers face the Blue Jackets at the Garden on Sunday hoping to jump over Columbus into the second wild-card slot. But if they’d just finished off Saturday’s game in Ottawa, this had the potential to be a very positive weekend. They’re just trying to salvage it now.
Shesterkin shines, despite giving up four
Tkachuk’s OT winner clearly fooled Shesterkin, who rarely gets beaten between the pads from distance. And he sure seemed to have the puck in a good spot to cover it before David Perron’s stick wedged it free, allowing Michael Amadio to jam it home with 2:52 to go.
But Shesterkin was on his game Saturday in spite of all that. He was especially good with his stick, interrupting a couple of passes through the slot as the Senators barreled toward the crease regularly.
The basic numbers look bad, especially for Shesterkin. He came into this one with a .906 save percentage, lowest of his career, and the goals-against average is a very pedestrian 2.86. But a look under the hood shows Shesterkin is really the only reason this Rangers season is even mediocre; without him, the Rangers would be headed toward the lottery for sure.
Entering Saturday’s game, Shesterkin sat third with 16.2 goals saved above expectation (courtesy Clear Sight Hockey), behind surefire Vezina Trophy candidates Connor Hellebuyck (16.22) and Logan Thompson (19.14). The way he played through the first 57 minutes on Saturday showed that the Rangers will still be in the hunt for a playoff spot no matter how bad his teammates play because he’s the best goalie on any of the teams vying for the last East spots.
So yes, he whiffed on the winner. He was too slow to cover the tying goal. He’s still the only hope this team has.
D-zone follies return
I hate to mention anything about December since the Rangers don’t much resemble the team that looked hopeless for six weeks, but when the current Rangers look bad it’s almost always because of their defensive-zone play. They were outworked on Saturday, which happens. But worse, there was confusion on coverages, on positioning, on everything.
That confusion spilled over yet again to a player forgetting who he was changing with in the second period, for the 13th too-many-men minor of the season. That’s tied with the Caps for most in the league. That’s ridiculous enough on its own.
But on the Sens’ tying goal part of the reason Ottawa had a stick free to jam the puck away from Shesterkin was Urho Vaakanainen and Vincent Trocheck colliding as they tried to get back to the house. It was the end of a long shift for Trocheck’s line and the Vaakanainen-Braden Schneider pair — Schneider had a rough one Saturday and hasn’t been sharp since the 4 Nations break, to be honest — but that’s no excuse. The Rangers lose 50-50 battles plenty, but it seems that too often, once they lose a battle in the D zone, they’re instantly scrambling to figure out who goes where.
On the OT winner K’Andre Miller made a terrible touch pass for J.T. Miller inside the Rangers end. After the turnover, J.T. Miller went to the middle of the zone… Where K’Andre Miller already was. Tkachuk was wide open.
Once Ottawa cut the Rangers’ lead to 3-2, the Rangers did have some good defensive shifts. Their fourth line of Brennan Othmann, Sam Carrick and Matt Rempe had a strong game and was rewarded with a shift inside of five minutes to go; Juuso Parssinen’s third line, with Chris Kreider (back in after missing the last five games (andJonny Brodzinski, also had a couple decent late shifts protecting the lead, though that line wasn’t particularly good the rest of the day.
But the Trocheck line, which produced two of the three Rangers goals, struggled to keep the puck up the ice. That line has had very strong expected-goals and scoring-chance shares the last two months and Peter Laviolette would surely cite that data as a reason why he’s keeping the line together, but it wasn’t a great finish for that line Saturday.
After going to review, Carson Soucy makes his New York Rangers debut with a goal! 🚨 pic.twitter.com/VGQRHAXKxy
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) March 8, 2025
Good debut for Soucy
Carson Soucy made his Rangers debut on Saturday and scored the Rangers’ first goal, an excuse-me soft toss on net that plinkoed through Linus Ullmark and barely over the goal line. Soucy, who was acquired Thursday from the Canucks for the 2025 third-round pick the Rangers got from Vegas for Reilly Smith, looked capable in 15:39 of ice time and on a pair with Zac Jones.
Laviolette said before Saturday’s game he didn’t want to mess with the other two pairs so Soucy, who came in for Calvin de Haan, took the vacant spot alongside Jones. That also hints at where Soucy will play when Adam Fox returns. Fox has resumed skating on his own, so his return could be a couple of weeks away; it’s quite likely that he’ll come back in and Jones will sit again.
Soucy had to waive his no-trade clause to come to the Rangers and listed off a few reasons why he did so after Saturday’s game.
“Obviously, a team that wants you, wants to trade for you, is a big part of that,” he said. “Nice having (J.T.) Miller, (Will) Borgen here. We were pretty tight in Seattle. Obviously, just New York, playing for the Rangers, playing in Madison Square Garden.”
(Photo: Chris Tanouye / Freestyle Photography / Getty Images)
