The Islanders and Rangers have not been this bad simultaneously in seven years — and it feels like they are entrenched in a battle to see which New York City-area team can be the most inept in 2024-25.
At least, that is what it felt like on Monday.
The Rangers led the day off with a late-matinee matchup in New Jersey against the Devils where veteran forward Chris Kreider was scratched, and were mopped 5-0 for their ninth loss in their last 13 games.
A huge loss to a more prominent rival was just the latest indignation for a team that has experienced a dramatic free fall from grace in an instant. After all, the Blueshirts won the Presidents Trophy last year as the NHL’s best regular season team and advanced to the Eastern Conference Final.
Now, things are in a state of chaos. Jacob Trouba and Kaapo Kakko were traded after their relationships with the team grew tumultuous, veterans like Kreider, Mika Zibanejad, and Vincent Trocheck have been stuck in neutral all season, and head coach Peter Laviolette might very well become the third head coach fired in the last four years.
“We’ve got to show more heart,” Trocheck said. “To a man, everybody has got to look himself in the mirror and dig deeper.”
Waking up on Christmas Eve sitting in seventh place of an eight-team Metropolitan Division, the Rangers only sit ahead of the Islanders, who embarrassed themselves later on Monday night when they lost on home ice to a Buffalo Sabres team that had dropped 13 straight games, 7-1.
A poorly-constructed team has been plagued by the same shortcomings for multiple seasons now with no resolution in sight. The Islanders cannot hold third-period leads and when they do not have that, their special teams are historically bad. New York’s penalty kill on pace to the be the worst ever.
The inconsistencies are overbearing. Just two days after playing one of their best games of the season — a 6-3 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs to stop a three-game skid — they were completely overmatched by the one of the worst teams in the league.
“We should be embarrassed,” center Bo Horvat said. “In front of our fans, to do that. In front of our goaltender who has bailed us out a lot over his career. Just an unacceptable effort by us.”
Maybe the holiday break will give both teams time to re-align themselves and figure something out. Or maybe, more likely, we are looking at the first 7-8 finish from these two teams in the Metropolitan Division for the first time since 2017-18.
