'It's F***ed': Calvin de Haan Addresses Lack of Playing Time with Rangers

Prior to an optional skate for the New York Rangers this morning, Calvin de Haan, who has only suited up in three games since coming over in the Ryan Lindgren trade, shared some frustrations in a passing comment with Mollie Walker of the New York Post:

Understandably, that quote made the rounds and spread like wildfire through no fault of Mollie’s or de Haan’s. This season has been an utter disaster for the Rangers and one of the many storylines surrounding this franchise throughout the season is various circumstances where players have voiced their frustrations. It started with Kaapo Kakko and continued with Zac Jones, it can be dated back to the offseason with Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba and even beyond that with Vitali Kravtsov. 

A thirty minute practice and one conversation with the Rangers’ PR department later, de Haan decided to wait until the end of the season, which is now less than a week away, to have those conversations. 

About an hour and a half after all this went down, de Haan made the following statement in reply to Jonny Lazarus on X:

Now there’s a lot to dissect here, but the main takeaway is that it’s not just one or two players that aren’t happy with how the Rangers are running things. It’s a whole collection of them. Joe Fortunato is going to have a piece taking a deeper look at this coming soon, but the culture problem in New York is a serious issue—one that is raising some really justifiable concerns moving forward with Chris Drury at the helm.  

Regarding de Haan, his frustrations are beyond valid. He made mention of this in his statement but the Rangers were 2-0-1 with him in the lineup. To go beyond that, the Rangers defense pairings were really good in those first few games that followed the Ryan Lindgren trade and de Haan was a big part of that. Sure, at 33 years old maybe he’s not someone you should want to rely on every night. But he gave this team every reason to believe he could be a valuable option on the back end moving forward. 

Now, the blue line did get a little crowded once everyone was healthy—although it turns out not everyone actually was, as we learned Braden Schneider has been nursing an injury for a while while playing through it. Not to mention the Rangers also brought inCarson Soucy, which played a huge role in de Haan becoming a healthy scratch for essentially the rest of the season (18 straight games). The team was also set on remaining competitive, and trying to push for that final wildcard position to make the playoffs. With that in mind, along with the fact that the team continued to struggle, specifically on the back end, the fact that de Haan remained in the press box made no sense to anyone, including the veteran defenseman himself. 

You can say the line about how you can only dress so many skaters but it’s incredibly difficult to comprehend how there wasn’t a single opportunity to give de Haan a second look in the last 18 games. Would he have been a difference maker and helped the Rangers get to a playoff spot? Who knows? But seeing some sort of effort to make chances and find a solution would have been better than the result we saw on a nightly basis. 

It will be especially interesting now to see if Calvin de Haan gets in the action at all with two games remaining in the season. We know that Matthew Robertson, who was called up in correspondence with the Braden Schneider injury, will make his NHL debut in one of those games, which makes finding a place for de Haan all the more difficult. Nevertheless, de Haan's locker clean-out day interview will be an incredibly interesting one to look out for.