The Rangers get a rare kind of week: two home games, a five-day pause in between, and a chance to keep building on the one place they’ve looked like a different team entirely. New York is 6-0-0 at Madison Square Garden, and after dropping two games in Ontario last week, the comfort of home could hardly come at a better time.
That stretch starts Monday night with a familiar face behind the bench. Former Rangers coach Peter Laviolette brings the Los Angeles Kings into the Garden, and then the schedule opens up long enough for New York to breathe before Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers arrive on Sunday.
The split personality has been hard to miss. At home, the Rangers have been sharp, structured and relentless on the puck. On the road, they’ve looked vulnerable, particularly on the defensive end.
That showed up last week. New York handled the Anaheim Ducks 5-2 on Oct. 19 in its lone home game, controlling the pace and making life miserable for the visitors the same way it has for the five other teams that have come through MSG.
But the road trip told a different story. The Rangers fell 5-4 to the Toronto Maple Leafs and 7-4 to the Ottawa Senators, with rookie goalie Dylan Garand getting little defensive support in front of him.
Garand has now started seven straight games since Igor Shesterkin went down with a season-ending knee injury on Oct. 9, and Mike Sullivan has not shown any inclination to turn to Spencer Martin. The veteran backup’s only action so far came in relief on Oct. 15 during a 7-1 loss at New Jersey.
There’s at least a chance the crease situation changes this week. James Reimer, who signed a PTO, opened his AHL Hartford stint with a 2-0 win on Friday, and the long break between games could make him a candidate to be brought to the Garden. At 38, Reimer has a much stronger resume than Martin.
One area the Rangers can lean on is Adam Fox, who is looking every bit like the defender who won the Norris Trophy in 2021. Fox piled up seven assists in New York’s three games last week and has 16 points, all of them assists, in 13 games. Only McDavid has more assists in the league.
The power on the other side of the ice is a little harder to ignore.
McDavid is shredding the NHL early, and he already made history on Thursday by becoming the fourth player ever to reach 30 points in 10 games or fewer. He joined Mario Lemieux, Mike Bossy and Wayne Gretzky in that club, and he also became the fourth player in league history to open a season with a 10-game assist streak. On top of that, he’s just the second player ever to have three five-point games in the first 10 games of a season; Lemieux did it twice.
McDavid enters the week with 33 points - eight goals and 25 assists - in 11 games, which puts him 10 ahead of Leon Draisaitl, who is tied for the NHL lead with 12 goals.
The Rangers have seen enough of McDavid to know how dangerous he is. He has nine goals and 24 points in 17 career games against New York, though the Blueshirts held him to one assist in both meetings last season.
The Oilers have also won four straight at Madison Square Garden, including a 2-0 victory on Oct. 14, 2025.
New York did answer back with a 4-3 overtime win in Edmonton 16 days later, ending a four-game losing streak against the Oilers, and J.T. Miller had the winner after the Rangers erased a 3-1 deficit.
Miller now has 12 goals and 38 points in 38 career games against Edmonton.
The Kings game brings its own storyline. Laviolette’s arrival will almost certainly draw a reaction from the Garden crowd after his 2024-25 Rangers became the dubious answer to one of the league’s strangest team swings, going from Presidents’ Trophy winners to a non-playoff team the next season. But his 2023-24 club set franchise marks with 55 wins and 115 points, finished first in the regular season and came within two victories of the Stanley Cup Final.
Artemi Panarin was a major reason for that success. He was a First-Team All-Star in 2023-24 after scoring 49 goals and finishing with 120 points, the second-highest single-season total in franchise history. The Rangers traded him to Los Angeles just before the Winter Olympic break last season, and he returned to MSG on March 16, picking up an assist in a 4-1 Kings win.
Los Angeles has also had New York’s number lately. The Kings have beaten the Rangers five straight times and have held them to seven total goals over that stretch.
They come in at 2-5-2, though they’ve gone 2-1-0 in their last three games despite a 3-1 loss in New Jersey on Saturday. Offense has been their biggest issue; through nine games, the Kings have scored just 21 goals.
Panarin has accounted for six of those goals and leads Los Angeles with nine points. Against his old team, he’s piled up 12 goals and 19 points in 13 career games.
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Wolf Pack Let Another Winnable Road Game Slip Away
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