The New York Rangers’ road problem has turned into one of the strangest early-season storylines in the league. At home, they’ve been spotless.
On the road, they’ve looked like a different team entirely. Through eight away games, the Rangers are 1-5-1 and have scored just 12 goals while giving up 26.
That split looks even sharper when you break it down by location. The Rangers are 6-0-0 at home, where they’ve piled up 29 goals and allowed only 10.
Away from MSG, the production has dried up and the goals against have ballooned. The ugly number on the scoreboard, though, has a lot more going on behind it than simple shooting luck or goaltending.
The road slide is also a pretty recent development. Of those 26 goals allowed away from home, 20 have come in the last four road games, and 19 of those were in just three matchups against New Jersey, Toronto, and Ottawa.
Before that stretch, the Rangers allowed six goals across three road games, though they still managed only one win. So while the overall totals are rough, the collapse has been concentrated in a handful of games.
The bigger issue is how the team is playing at five-on-five. At home, the Rangers own a 54.07% xG share, a 51.55% HDCF share, and a 55.24% HDSF share.
They’ve also turned those high-danger looks into 16 goals with a 27.59% shooting rate. On the road, those numbers fall to 44.63% in xG share, 50% in HDCF share, and 47.42% in HDSF share, while the high-danger shooting rate sinks to 6.52%.
That’s not just a dip; that’s a team failing to generate and finish dangerous chances away from home.
There’s a clear pattern in the matchup game, too. At home, Mike Sullivan can line up his preferred combinations.
He can roll the JT Miller or Noah Laba line against top competition, and he can shelter the Alberts Smits-Braden Schneider pair against softer minutes. On the road, that control disappears without last change, and opponents have taken advantage.
Ottawa did it on Saturday by feeding the Tim Stutzle line against Smits and Schneider. Toronto worked Auston Matthews into those same kinds of looks.
Meanwhile, the Marcus Pettersson-Sean Durzi pair, which serves as the Rangers’ main shutdown unit, mostly drew the Dylan Cozens line. The result is a blue line that looks far less stable away from home than it does at MSG.
One obvious fix would be to reshuffle the defense pairs. Even if the Rangers want to keep Schneider in the lineup, they’ve been exposed when the Vlad Gavrikov-Adam Fox pair isn’t on the ice.
At home, the matchups can hide that problem. On the road, they can’t.
Maybe this smooths itself out over an 84-game season. Maybe it doesn’t.
With a five-day break coming up, the Rangers at least have time to try something different. If they keep defending like this on the road, the problem isn’t just annoying anymore.
It’s the kind of thing that can drag down a season.
In Other News...
Panarin Just Reopened A Brutal Rangers Reality At MSG
Artemi Panarins return to Madison Square Garden once again put a spotlight on what the Rangers gave up when they moved on from him. In his second visit back since the trade, he was right in the middle of the action, scoring a goal and adding an assist as his new club handled the building with ease. For a Rangers team still trying to settle into life without him, it was another reminder of how quickly an old star can make a new place feel like home.
Panarin has been productive from the start this season, piling up seven goals and four assists in 10 games for the Los Angeles Kings, while the Rangers continue to look for answers from the player they brought in to replace him. Pavel Dorofeyev has managed only three goals in 14 games, and his recent move down to the third line only deepens the concern about whether New York has found the right answer yet. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Still Have One Big Pavel Dorofeyev Debate Hanging Over Them
The Rangers have enough problems without having to worry about one of their big offseason additions, but Pavel Dorofeyevs early stretch in New York has become part of the conversation anyway. In a season where the club has dropped five of its last six and has had to navigate the ripple effects of Igor Shesterkins injury along with its own defensive issues, Dorofeyevs adjustment has been closely watched because he was brought in to help add more bite to the attack.
His numbers through 14 games have lagged a bit behind what he showed with the Vegas Golden Knights, but there are signs he is settling in. Dorofeyev has started to flash more of the offense the Rangers expected, and his recent run of productivity suggests this is still a work in progress rather than a finished judgment on the move. The bigger question now is whether the Rangers can count on that trend to keep building as they try to steady themselves. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Prospects Are Starting To Build Real Momentum Overseas
A handful of Rangers prospects kept busy overseas last week, and there were signs that the organizations development pipeline is starting to pick up some real traction. Rico Gredig got on the board for EV Zug in Switzerland, while Mikkel Eriksen continued to hold a prominent role for Frjestad BK in Sweden, where he has been seeing top-six minutes and finding ways to stay involved offensively.
For a Rangers system that is always under the microscope, those kinds of updates matter because they show more than just ice time. Gredigs first goal of the season and Eriksens steady work in Sweden were part of a broader stretch that also included other prospects getting reps in their own leagues, a useful sign that several young players are building confidence at once rather than waiting for one breakout to carry the group. [Read more 🡒]