The arrival of two-time Stanley Cup-winning head coach Mike Sullivan gave New York Rangers fans a renewed sense of excitement for the 2025-26 NHL season. He brought immediate credibility and a winning mindset to the organization with the hope he could get the team back on track after the bitter disappointment that was the 2024-25 season.
So far, things are not going as planned.
Especially on home ice, where the Rangers fell to 0-4-1 this season (and 3-4-2 overall) on Thursday night in an ugly 6-5 overtime loss against the San Jose Sharks.
Historically bad start on home ice for Rangers
With Thursday’s loss, the Rangers are now winless through their first five home games, something that has not happened to the franchise since the 1943-44 season.
While that overall record at home is bad enough, it is actually even worse than that.
Not only have the Rangers failed to win a game at home, but they did not even score a single goal in their first three home games, getting shut out in three consecutive games. That shutout streak finally ended on Monday, when they scored a couple of minutes into their game against the Minnesota Wild, and then did not score again.
Entering play on Thursday, they had just one goal in four home games, while being outscored by a 9-1 margin.
On Thursday, the offense finally arrived with five goals, but that was accompanied by their sloppiest defensive effort of the season where they had no answer for the Sharks and Macklin Celebrini.
The second-year standout recorded a hat trick and finished with five points, assisting on Will Smith’s game-winning goal.
What makes this such an ugly loss for the Rangers is that San Jose is the type of team they should be beating. The Sharks entered Thursday’s game as the only winless team in the NHL, and they had won just seven of their previous 46 games going back to the second half of the 2024-25 season.
You cannot make the playoffs or win a championship in October. But you can make it incredibly hard on yourself when it comes to actually getting to the playoffs. The Rangers are not doing themselves any favors in the standings, and they are doing even fewer favors when it comes to convincing their fans that the 2024-25 season was some kind of a fluke.
