For the second time after winning the Presidents’ Trophy, the New York Rangers have gone into the dark again with a huge collapse in the 2024-25 season. They are now eliminated from contending in the playoffs after dropping a tough 7-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes last Saturday, which has certainly closed the door on them for good.

The Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy in 1991-92 – showing off a 50-25-5 record and delivering one of the best seasons in franchise history. However, they fell off the playoff column in the next season with a 34-39-11 record in 1992-93 – and history has repeated itself now more than ever.

But despite the disappointing finish, it seems that there’s still a lot of positive takeaways that the team can look at, especially with the fact that they had an early exit – meaning that they will likely get started in managing the future of their roster heading into the coming months. So far, it is enough to say that the Rangers will be enjoying a great offseason despite not contending for the playoffs.

A Tough Finish for the Rangers

The Rangers had 55 wins last season to account for 114 points – even reaching the Eastern Conference Finals before losing to the Florida Panthers. This season? The team ended up at 37-36-7 after that loss to Carolina, and it cannot be denied this has been a tough run with the way that many things have gone wrong for the Rangers for most of the season.

For starters, after enjoying a 12-4-1 run in November, it took just six weeks for their record to evaporate as they just won only four of their next 19 games in that stretch – even losing five games in a row from November 21-29 and then another six straight from December 16-17. To close out 2024, the Rangers even lost four in a row – indicating a really tough struggle for before 2025 began.

Another big thing to consider is the Power Play, which saw them rank third in the 2023-24 season at 26.4%. In 2024-25, they're 27th in the League at 17.9 percent, including a woeful 11.3 percent with four short-handed goals against since February 5th. That is a huge difference in consistency level, which definitely played a huge role in their tough breaks in the campaign.

To sum it up, the Rangers also had 28 comeback wins last season, including five times where they trailed by at least two goals. That was not evident this year as they only had 15 comeback wins and finished the season as the lone team without any multigoal comebacks. From being resilient, the Rangers have become quite complacent.

An Optimistic Approach to the Offseason

Still, there are plenty of reasons to look out for the Rangers on a positive note. One big reason is the fact that they still have a star goalie in Igor Shesterkin – who signed an eight-year, $92 million deal. This season, the goalie tallied 26 wins, a 2.91 goals-against average, .903 save percentage and five shutouts.

Another optimistic note is how sophomore forward Will Cuylle has improved in his games, topping off the campaign with 43 points coming off 20 goals and 23 assists – while not missing a single game this season.

So far, there’s enough reason for the Rangers to look forward to the offseason and the next campaign with a lot of optimism, and it seems that they are pushing forward on that regard while the rest of the NHL world gets busy with the playoffs coming in hot.