The Cost of Losing: A Eulogy for the 2024-25 New York Rangers

One of the biggest complaints I have about the ineptitude of the New York Rangers, stretching back to my birth into this fanbase in 1988, is that they think they know better than everyone else when they so very often do not.

The New York Rangers as an organization, with royal blood that traces back to the advent of the sport, carries itself like it's done something.

It has not.

For the first time in my memory, the players who made up the core of this team back at the start of last summer carried themselves into this season as though they had done something.

They had not. And now they will not. At least not as a part of this organization.

And when the general manager who worked so hard to keep them together for years shook the foundation, they quit—on him, on their coach, on the fans, and on themselves.

As if they deserved the right to remain together without consequences. As though losing doesn't matter. Only it does.

There is a cost to losing.

This group of players wanted to keep the friendship circle together in perpetuity. They got two coaches fired, a third already added to the list, and did nothing more than amass disappointment along the way. They got close, sure, but they never got past close. They never got over the hump. And when they wanted another run at the Stanley Cup, they got it. When they failed and got to stay together for another one, they failed again.

At every turn they were given the benefit of the doubt. At every turn they were not good enough. And while that on its own is not completely their fault, the way they handled the bill coming due was.

When the Rangers lost to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2022, they were seen as a younger group that grew up sooner than expected. A team worth building around. A core worth keeping together. Kids who had true potential, who were expected to grow, and who could mesh with the slightly older core to push this team over the top. Chris Drury seemingly saw the same thing, and added star power to the board in 2023, without sacrificing roster players to do it.

What happened next was a precursor to the abomination that would happen this season. The Rangers wilted under the lights against the New Jersey Devils in the first round of the playoffs, the second-straight year the team would blow a 2-0 series lead and lose. Major names didn't show up in that series, notably Artemi Panarin and Mika Zibanejad, but there were problems elsewhere, as well.

The players demanded accountability and structure. It wasn't their fault at all, it was the coach! They didn't know what they needed to do, the lines were a mess, and no one had confidence. They needed a change, they said. Drury elected to agree with them, and the axe of consequence fell on Gerard Gallant, who was (rightly) fired, even after back-to-back 100-point seasons. The core? It stayed in place.

In his first season behind the Rangers' bench, Peter Laviolette was everything the team asked for and more. He brought structure and accountability. The Rangers played hard and practiced harder. He demanded a lot from them and in the regular season they met the challenge. They raised a President's Trophy banner, players had career years, and the team cruised through the first round of the playoffs, sweeping Washington without breaking a sweat. Then they dispatched the Carolina Hurricanes (again) in six games, bailed out by Chris Kreider's 3rd period heroics in game 6. And then, well, you know what happened next.

The reality of this New York Rangers' core is very simple, though. And it underlies the issues we've seen the better past of the last four years.

They are losers.

That doesn't mean they don't have redeeming qualities. The 2023-24 season was the most fun I have ever had as a New York Rangers fan. There was a magic they captured that not even 2014 touched. They were fun and exciting, they tried, they grappled, and they won—at least until the going got really tough. There were comeback wins, dominant stretches, a record-breaking season, playoff overtime goals, and double overtime goals, huge hits, and magic. So much magic.

When the well ran dry the fanbase felt it. The shockwaves that reverberated through the organization wasn't simply because they lost to Florida, it was how they lost to Florida. They got bodied by a team that was more than the sum of their parts. The Rangers looked across the ice and saw a guy like Matthew Tkachuk and had nothing of the sort. Leadership—actual leadership—lived in that locker room and hopped over those boards. A coach who knew how to adjust was behind the bench. Players who lived up to their expectations crushed the Rangers into a fine powder.

Fine, it happens. It hurts, but it's the way things go. Only one team raises the Cup each year.

But here, dear reader, is where the rubber meets the road.

Drury had been patient with this group. Anyone who works for a living understands that there are expectations in any job, and when those expectations are consistently not met then there must be action. Drury gave them rope, and then more of it. And they finally hung themselves.

The leadership in the locker room wanted another chance. They wanted another opportunity to run the same thing back again, losing be damned. Were they good enough? Nope. Did that matter to them? Nope. The New York Rangers were seen as a country club organization before the 2004-05 lockout, a place to get paid to play without expectation. This group apparently wanted those good old days back and felt that being good, but not good enough, was worth not making any changes.

That is not how this works.

You can say whatever you want about the way Chris Drury went about starting to dismantle the team. You can complain about his lack of a soft touch, you can complain about the way he put things into the media, or even how down and dirty he got to get bad contracts off this team. What you cannot deny is that he was right about them. And even if you can point to him being a jerk, and even if you can clutch your pearls about how the players were supposed to succeed with a fire-breathing taskmaster overseeing the group, you cannot deny he gave them ample opportunity to figure it out for themselves. And when they did not, and he came calling to make changes, they stomped their feet and cried about it.

Like children.

Drury refused to take the bait. He waived Barclay Goodrow in what was a necessary, but still ugly, jettisoning of a leader in the room. He then tried to move on from Jacob Trouba, another culture shock to a group of veterans who were reeling from the Goodrow departure. And in what ultimately was the worst decision he could make, Drury blinked. He relented on Trouba, allowing him to stay, assuming he would be able to move past the summer drama and give the team one more kick at the can.

You know how that played out by now.

There is a cost to losing. It might be hard to swallow, but it is etched into the stone of professional sports. If you want things to stay the same, you win. If you want things to be consistent, you try. You have to perform for those luxuries, and regardless of whether or not you play by those rules, the checks come every two weeks. It's part of the bargain.

Drury using the leverage he had to make hard decisions is his part of the bargain. This is how things work in professional sports.

This summer is going to be worse than last summer. Not only does the team not have an Eastern Conference Final berth to point to, they also have no sense of hope. More importantly, the core of this team quit for six weeks and turned their backs on the team and the fans. I do not use that term lightly, either. I have never seen something as disgraceful as what this core did this year in my life.

So there will be consequences for that.

Chris Kreider—a legacy player for this organization, and miss me with any other opinions on him—wants out as much as the team wants away from him. It's an insane 180 from the near mythical status of Kreider, less than a year removed from the third period natural hat trick that saved the Rangers' season. The rift between the two sides has gotten worse over the years, and made remarkably evident by a series of public events: One where Kreider publicly detailed every inch of his injury history (in a move I am not convinced wasn't to stop him getting traded in season) or some of the pieces of the Vince Mercogliano's story about the team's (lack of) culture.

Drury is going to have to get very creative to get Mika Zibanejad to waive his full no movement clause this summer, but my guess is it's the top priority on a list of things the general manager wants to get done.

From there, things don't get much easier. At this stage, my best guess is that every player is going to be evaluated through breakup day and leading up to the draft. Before the Artemi Panarin settlement was reported by The Athletic I would have told you Igor Shesterkin, Adam Fox, J.T. Miller, Trocheck, and Panarin. Now there's reasons to question Panarin being in that list—although it's worth noting he did play in the final game of the regular season.

The culture has to be changed, from top to bottom. The top being the environment that exists within this organization that Drury has perpetuated—either intentionally or not—and the bottom being getting the right players off this team (not a typo). To maybe everything in between.

This season has been a foundation-shaking failure. According to reports James Dolan might take a more active hand in player evaluations and breakup day as a whole. Good. I think that oversight by the owner will force the connotation that this shit was not acceptable. Drury said he needed to be better. Laviolette was fired for his sins. The players will ultimately either skirt the blame or say they should have been better. Parsing what is and isn't lip service there is paramount.

Drury has been right about this group before. It's the one saving grace in my mind.

But his weeks of judgement are coming. And they start today.

Goodbye 2024-2025 New York Rangers. We'll talk about you forever in all the wrong ways.

Because there is a cost to losing.