For more than a decade the New York Rangers were perennial contenders in the NHL. The team came awfully close to winning the Stanley Cup three separate times, which is a lot more than most franchises can say.
Legacy talk has done irreparable damage done to the modern sports discourse. Instead of appreciating true greatness in the moment, it is diminished in the broader conversation. That is why the past decade of Rangers hockey is talked down. Right now, with the dust settled on the Henrik Lundqvist window of contention, it looks bleak.
The Rangers never gave Lundqvist the team around him that was ultimately capable of breaking through. The team was always good, but not good enough come playoff time. The crap shoot atmosphere within the playoffs often leads to flukey and streaky results. Winning four games in seven tries is a vastly different enterprise from winning in the regular season.
Through both John Tortorella and Alain Vigneault, the Rangers have been amongst the best regular season teams in the NHL. Over the past eight seasons, New York has won 385 games. In comparison, the Washington Capitals have won 414 games and the Pittsburgh Penguins have won and the Pittsburgh Penguins have won 422 games during that stretch.
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The team never won the Stanley Cup, so many of the accomplishments of the past decade seem moot. However, it is important to note just how many teams would have traded for it.
The dark ages
In the scope of Rangers franchise, the past ten years is an outlier and amongst the best in team history. In the team’s 91 years of existence, the team has had five different stretches where the group qualified for the postseason seven or more seasons in a row. Two of those instances were during the original six era in which there was only one round of the playoffs.
For perspective, the great Rangers teams of the early 90s missed the playoffs one season during their run. Following New York’s great success with a Stanley Cup in 1994, the team fell into that soggy middle of the league. The late 90s and early 2000 Ranger teams were littered with over the hill veterans. Those groups were not serious contenders and missed the postseason every year from 1997 until 2005.
During that stretch in the early 2000s, the team was so terrible that they never finished higher than fourth in the old Patrick division. An average season between 1998 and 2005 was 73.8 points and sitting on the couch by the first week of April. That seems like ions ago in respect to just how far along the Rangers as an organization have come.
The turn around
It is no coincidence that the Rangers started returning to the postseason at the same time that Henrik Lundqvist came over to North America. With the team featuring one of, if not the best, goaltenders in the entire world, New York hockey was back. However, those teams of the mid and late 2000s were not serious contenders. Although Jaromir Jagr had a career renaissance in Ranger blue, the team never got past the second round.
It was not until Tortorella took over the team in 2009 that there was a substantial culture change. It was the arrival of players like Ryan McDonagh, Derek Stepan, Carl Hagelin, Chris Kreider and others that the team found its groove. With a group of players bubbling over with potential, the team finished in first in the eastern conference during the 2011-2012 season.
From there, the Rangers were among the best teams in the league for a five year period. During this five year stretch the team made the conference finals three times and the cup finals once. With a clean bill of health in 2015, they probably eke by the Tampa Bay Lightning and make the final two times in a row.
For perspective
The thing to keep in mind is just how hard it is to compete in the NHL. There is a reason, that for the most part, the same teams are always in the mix. The bad organizations never really figure it out. The team’s with the longest postseason droughts, the Carolina Hurricanes, Buffalo Sabres, Arizona Coyotes and Vancouver Canucks have been in rebuilds since their last respective playoff appearance.
Of course, the Rangers have the longest Stanley Cup drought in the history of the NHL at 54 years when they won the Stanley Cup in 1994. For some, missing the playoffs just once in the past 13 years seems like the end of the world. They’ve made plans to fold the franchise after just one bad season. The team could not maintain that level of quality during the regular season forever.
The Rangers constant efforts to add to their contender left the prospect pool thin. So, when time to pay off their debts for constant trades came, the team was left with no in house replacements.
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New York has the most postseason wins of any team this decade without winning the Stanley Cup. The process of building a contender may not happen over night. In fact, the Rangers might miss the playoffs next year too. But, those memories from the Lundqvist era, those make the rough times worth it.