The Rangers are giving their fans a pretty simple message five games into the season: enjoy this while it’s here.
They’ve won four in a row, they’re sitting on top of the league, and for the moment everything looks exactly the way they would have drawn it up. That doesn’t make the next six months easy to predict, but it does make the start impossible to ignore.
Of course, there are caveats. It’s still early in an 84-game season, and the schedule hasn’t exactly been brutal.
Tampa Bay was the best team they’ve beaten during this run, and that 5-1 win in the home opener came against a Lightning club playing its first game and still working through the usual early-season mess. Detroit wasn’t exactly a shock either, considering all the issues around that team and the fact that it was also playing its first game.
Beating Utah on the second night of a back-to-back was a good result, and knocking off the Islanders always carries some extra weight, but even there the matchup came with context: Semyon Varlamov was in net, making his first NHL appearance in nearly two years after two partial knee replacements. Ilya Sorokin might have stopped Oliver Bjorkstrand’s first shot on Tuesday night, and the whole game could have looked different from there.
That’s why Friday’s trip to Washington matters as a better measuring stick. The Capitals are the kind of team many people expect to be in the mix with the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes at the top of the Metropolitan Division.
They missed the playoffs by a hair last season, then added Alex Tuch, Jordan Kyrou and Boone Jenner over the summer. And with Alex Ovechkin announcing he will retire after this season, there’s every reason to expect an extra layer of emotion around that group.
Even with all that said, the Rangers have shown enough over these four wins to suggest something real is happening. The biggest reason starts in goal.
Igor Shesterkin has looked like the version of himself the Rangers need, and maybe the version they’ve been waiting for. He had a strong preseason and has carried that into the regular season, going 3-1 with a 1.75 goals-against average and a .926 save percentage.
He was named the NHL’s First Star of the Week, and so far he’s looked every bit like the kind of goalie this team has leaned on to cover for a lot of mistakes.
That help has mattered, because the Rangers have also cleaned up one of their biggest problem areas: transition defense. Over the last four games, they’ve given up far fewer odd-man rushes than they did in that season-opening 3-0 loss to the Bruins in Boston.
That’s been a recurring issue for this team for several seasons, so nobody’s pretending it’s solved forever. But if this is a real step forward, it changes the shape of everything.
It takes pressure off Shesterkin, and it helps keep him fresher later in the season.
The late-game work has stood out too. After Tuesday’s win, when the Islanders managed only five shots on goal in the third period, the Rangers talked about how much they like the way they’re finishing games.
“We keep playing,’’ Mika Zibanejad said. “We don't back off… I think we're confident in our game, and what we're capable of doing.
I think we just trust it. We trust that it's going to generate looks.
It's going to generate chances for us if we do the right thing, and so far, so good.”
That part matters because the Rangers have not just been surviving; they’ve been closing. And that’s a noticeable change from what fans have lived through the past two years.
Still, nobody should pretend four wins in October settle anything. The season is long, the tests are about to get tougher, and plenty can change. But for now, the Rangers have given their fans something they haven’t had enough of lately: a hot start, some real signs of improvement, and a reason to feel good about the moment.
Four straight wins also matches the longest streak last year’s Rangers put together, and that came in March. Right now, they’re already ahead of that pace.
In Other News...
Alexis Lafrenire Just Became The Face Of This Rangers Surge
The Rangers latest surge kept rolling at home with a 5-2 win over the Islanders, their fourth straight victory, and it came with a little bit of everything the building could have asked for. Cole Beaudoin made his NHL debut after being recalled because Joe Veleno was sidelined by injury, while Semyon Varlamov got his first regular-season start in 676 days after going through knee surgeries. It was the kind of night that felt like another small marker for a team trying to stack wins and settle into something sturdier.
Alexis Lafrenire was at the center of it again, driving the offense in a game where the Rangers looked increasingly comfortable pressing the pace and closing it out. His latest performance only added to the sense that New York has found a reliable front-facing spark during this run, especially with the way the wins are starting to come in different forms. The bigger question now is whether this stretch is the start of something more lasting, with Lafrenire right in the middle of it. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Face A Different Capitals Threat In Ovechkins Final Run
The Rangers have responded to an opening-night shutout loss by rattling off four straight wins, but the next stretch of the schedule brings a different kind of attention to the Metropolitan Division. Washington is still built around Alex Ovechkins presence, and the Capitals remain one of the leagues more familiar rivals for New York as this young season starts to settle in.
Ovechkins final NHL run gives every meeting with Washington a little extra weight, even as the Capitals have quietly adjusted their look up front. With new faces around the roster and a franchise icon in his last lap, the matchup carries both the usual division stakes and a hint of transition, making the Rangers next check-in with the Caps feel like more than just another early-season game. [Read more 🡒]
Mike Sullivan Is Already Changing The Feel Around These Rangers
The early tone around the Rangers has shifted quickly this season, and Mike Sullivan deserves a big share of the credit for it. New York has looked sharper and more connected in the opening stretch, with better chemistry and a more competitive edge showing up in the way the team is playing. Sullivan has already left his mark not just on the bench, but in the way the roster is being handled and in the steadier performances coming from the lineup.
For a team that spent so much time searching for the right mix, that matters. The change in feel is obvious enough that Sullivan is already drawing attention beyond the day-to-day results, with some of the early-season buzz centering on what his impact could mean over a full year. The Rangers are moving in the right direction, and the next question is how long this momentum can last once the league starts testing them more seriously. [Read more 🡒]