The New York Rangers are in trouble.
More accurately, they've been in trouble for the last couple of weeks. They are 3-11-0 in their last 14 games, not a record that a team wants to ever deal with, and with just four months to go until the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin on April 17, the Rangers could go from a President's Trophy winning team last season to one of the worst this season.
There's a couple of big factors as to why New York has continued barreling downhill:
Frustrating GM moves, usual star players washing out in the games they actually play in, and so on. The drama all started last offseason when Rangers GM Chris Drury made a pair of poor free agency choices that have since come back to bite New York in the rear. Veteran RW Barclay Goodrow was dealt to rebuilding San Jose without much team knowledge as well as captain Jacob Trouba to Anaheim, disappointing the rest of the Rangers team. It was apparently to help develop the many young players New York has now, but that's got a problem too.
The Rangers have simply not effectively developed players like Victor Mancini, Jonny Brodzinski, and others playing in Hartford.
New York has spent quite a lot of time this season trying to rebuild and retool its most dedicated players, the likes of Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, and Artemi Panarin having some of their worst career seasons.
The Rangers' Big Three is simply being put under too much pressure to constantly do well, and the result is the above. Add to that mismanaging free agent veterans and also doing next to nothing at the league-wide trade deadline last summer, and you have a textbook recipe for disaster. It certainly begs the question if New York blows up its entire front office and cuts loose both Drury and HC Peter Laviolette.
And as for other team positions, longtime play-by-play announcer Sam Rosen's final season of calling Rangers games on TV has been relegated to mediocrity, a real shame for one of the game's greatest-ever broadcasters.
This Rangers team is a far cry from the team that won the President's Trophy with the best regular season record and record in franchise history.
Just six months ago, this was a team that although they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers in the Eastern Conference Finals, they still fought through Capitals and Hurricanes to get there. And they had the best lineup possible, unlike today, where many of those players are either gone or are still playing in Manhattan but at a much more disappointing pace.