New York Rangers Control Their Destiny With Metropolitan Division Heavy Schedule

The New York Rangers have 33 games remaining in their regular season campaign. Almost half of them are against Metropolitan Division teams. With that said, how they play down the stretch can make or break their season.

For better or worse, the New York Rangers currently sit in the top wildcard slot in the Eastern Conference. They currently have 63 points through their first 49 games. While that total ranks 5th in the East, 3 of the four teams standing in their way are also in the stacked Metropolitan Division.

Although the Blueshirts are currently sitting pretty in that top wildcard spot, 7 points more than the next best team (Philadelphia), they have a very tough remaining schedule that is very heavy on divisional matchups.

Division Heavy Schedule

In their remaining 33 games, the Rangers will play Metropolitan Division teams 14 times. The Blueshirts play the Blue Jackets three times (including tonight), the Penguins twice (both in the last five games of the season), the Capitals three times, the Flyers once, the Devils twice, the Islanders twice and the Hurricanes once.

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They play four of their last five games against divisional teams (two against Pittsburgh, one against Washington and one against Philadelphia). They have eight remaining matchups with the top three teams in the division.

That is a very rough schedule, to say the least.

But that might be the best thing that could happen to them.

So far this season, the four top teams in the Metropolitan Division have been winning at a very large rate. Even with the Rangers winning 31 of their first 49 games, they still find themselves below three other rivals. With the division-heavy schedule–which the NHL should do for every team in the second half of the season going forward–the Rangers will be able to control if those teams above them go down in the standings.

Playoff Implications?

Not only will this influx of divisional games help the teams involved gain or lose traction on their rivals, but it will also help give them recent experience against a team come playoff time.

With the way the league has changed the playoff format–a stupid, stupid format, might I add–the league is force feeding rivalry games in the first round instead of letting them happen naturally. Since it is looking likely that there will be five Metropolitan division teams in the postseason again this year, there will be two Metro-on-Metro series right from the get-go.

Don’t underplay how the familiarity of the teams due to recent play will effect these series. It’s not enough that these teams are in the situation, but by playing all these games against each other in a short amount of time before the playoffs even start, the series is going to start on an energetic note. This will prevent the traditional feeler-type game to start out a round.

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Here is my point to all of this; the Rangers must use this upcoming stretch of games to end the season as a learning experience, too. Not only do they have to get the points, but they need to get the experience playing against the teams they will likely face in both the first and second round. This could be a blessing or a curse. Lets see how they handle it.