Rangers midseason report: MVP, most improved, biggest disappointment and more awards
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Vincent Z. Mercogliano and Peter Baugh
Halfway through the 2025-26 NHL season, let's dissect what's happened to the Rangers so far and size up what’s still to come.
NEW YORK — Monday’s 3-2 overtime loss against the Carolina Hurricanes marked game No. 41 for the 2025-26 New York Rangers, which puts them exactly halfway through the NHL’s 82-game schedule.
They’ll enter the second half with a middling 19-17-5 record and .524 points percentage that sits at the bottom of the Eastern Conference as of the end of the first slate of Monday night’s games. Yet their 43 total points leave them only one point out of the final wild-card spot, a nod to both how many games the Rangers have played (they lead the league) and the jumbled nature of the East standings.
To assess the state of the team, we’ve come up with 10 categories — everything from positives and negatives — to dissect what’s happened so far and preview what’s still to come.
(Note: All stats referenced prior to Monday’s games unless specified otherwise.)
MVP: Igor Shesterkin
This category would have been much easier had Adam Fox not gotten hurt Nov. 29 against the Tampa Bay Lightning. He was the obvious frontrunner at that point, producing at just under a point-per-game pace (26 points in 27 games) and forming an elite pair with free-agent addition Vladislav Gavrikov. But the Rangers have now played 14 games without Fox, so we didn’t feel his sample size was big enough to be midway MVP.
That left four logical options: Shesterkin, Artemi Panarin, Gavrikov and Mika Zibanejad.
Gavrikov, team president and general manager Chris Drury’s big addition this summer, has been a strong fit and the 30-year-old has a case as team MVP so far. He led a poll we put out on X, so clearly fans appreciate what he has brought to the team defensively. His underlying numbers, though, have dipped with Fox out, which made him hard to select as team MVP even if he’s had to manage a steep increase in ice time.
So @Peter_Baugh and I are working on our #NYR midseason report today and the toughest choice is deciding on team MVP.
Adam Fox was on pace to be the guy, but hard to pick someone who's missed over 30% of the season.
Availability adds value, but do any of these four jump out?
Panarin has rebounded from a slow start and leads the team in goals (14) and points (39) after picking up an assist Monday. Still, he hasn’t been quite as dynamic this season. Opponents have held him off the scoresheet 18 times, which is almost as much as all of last season (23 times).
Zibanejad had a difficult 2024-25, and he’s been much better this season. The 32-year-old no longer looks capable of scoring 40 goals, but he’s provided strong two-way play and is one of the Rangers’ leading scorers. Still, that didn’t feel like enough to usurp Shesterkin, our ultimate choice.
Shesterkin, who finished just behind Gavrikov in the fan vote, has had a good year, though perhaps not one he’s satisfied with given his high standards. He has a .910 save percentage and entered Monday ranked eighth in the NHL in goals saved above expected (17.93), per Evolving Hockey. The goalie has frequently kept the Rangers in games, even when the offense has failed to produce. Imagine where this team would be without him. (Backup goaltender Jonathan Quick deserves a shoutout here, too. His nine games played are too few to be considered for this category, but he’s been excellent.) — Peter Baugh
Most improved: Matthew Robertson
Very few players can be labeled improved during the Rangers’ uneven first half, but Robertson has been an unexpected bright spot.
Consider his journey: A second-round pick in 2019 who entered New York’s system with relatively high expectations, Robertson’s prospect status fizzled in the years that followed. He spent four full seasons with AHL Hartford and was trending toward becoming a career minor-leaguer, but he’s experienced a breakthrough nearly seven years after being drafted.
The 24-year-old started the season as a healthy scratch but earned his way into the lineup and has appeared in 32 out of 41 games. He’s been especially sturdy since Fox went down, leading all Rangers defensemen with a 59.98 percent expected goals-for rate over the past month, according to Natural Stat Trick. — Vincent Z. Mercogliano
Most disappointing: Alexis Lafrenière
When the Rangers signed Lafrenière to a seven-year extension Oct. 25, 2024, he was coming off a career-best 57-point season and had four goals and seven points in seven games to start 2024-25. Perhaps he wasn’t going to live up to his billing as a No. 1 draft pick, but he seemed to be settling in as a strong top-six player.
Since then, Lafrenière has 58 points in 116 games entering Monday. He has eight goals and 20 points this year, even though he’s on pace for a career high in power-play ice time. With the Rangers’ depleted scoring depth and lack of young, high-skill forwards, they need him to be at least on par with his 2023-24 version. That year, though, is looking more like an anomaly than an expectation: a concerning development for New York.
Though Lafrenière was our choice in this category, he wasn’t the only option. J.T. Miller would have made sense, too. The Rangers acquired him and made him captain because he can produce above a point-per-game level and bring an edge. While he’s taken on difficult defensive matchups this season, he’s been part of the team’s scoring struggles with only 22 points in 35 games. He’s currently out with an upper-body injury. — Baugh
Biggest surprise: Improved defense
The Rangers have been among the NHL’s sorriest offensive teams, but I’m not sure anyone saw them turning around their defense as quickly as they have under new coach Mike Sullivan.
For years, many players this coaching staff inherited were plagued by their own sloppiness. Turnovers through the neutral zone. Odd-man rushes against. Repeated failure to cover the slot and net-front areas. Disjointed breakouts. But those areas have been noticeably cleaned up over the last few months.
Right from the start, the Rangers played with a level of structure that disappeared last season. Sullivan’s layered 1-2-2 forechecking system and switch from man-to-man coverage to a box-and-one zone paid immediate dividends. New York has gone from 28th in expected goals against per 60 and 29th in high-danger scoring chances allowed in 2024-25 to fourth and second, respectively, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Sullivan is still searching for ways to squeeze more offense out of a skill-deprived roster, but his defensive adjustments are at least giving the Rangers a chance to win most nights. — Mercogliano
Noah Laba has become a mainstay on the Rangers’ third line, playing every game this season as a rookie. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
Best rookie: Noah Laba
The Rangers were right to be excited about Laba entering the season. He quickly turned himself from an encouraging prospect to a full-time NHLer. He beat out Juuso Pärssinen for the third-line center job out of training camp and hasn’t given it up since.
The 22-year-old Laba has played every game this season. His offensive numbers — five goals and 12 points — aren’t anything spectacular, but he’s held up well enough defensively and stands out regularly with his speed and motor. He seems like someone who could be in the lineup for years to come. — Baugh
Best win: 3-2 over Dallas Stars
The Rangers were coming off a brutal loss to Tampa Bay in which Fox got hurt. Dallas — one of the best teams in the West — kicked off a stretch of difficult games, and New York delivered one of its strongest efforts of the season on Dec. 2. The Rangers didn’t look overmatched, and Will Cuylle scored a six-on-five goal to send the game to overtime.
It was the team’s first tying goal in the final three minutes of a game since March 2, 2024, and Gavrikov made it count by scoring the overtime winner. The game showcased resiliency the Rangers didn’t seem capable of during their disastrous 2024-25 season. — Baugh
Worst loss: 4-1 to Tampa Bay
There are several candidates for this dreary distinction, but the confluence of events at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 29 rises above the rest.
It was an embarrassing defeat on multiple levels. The loss dropped New York to 2-8-1 at MSG, with five points registering as a new franchise low through 11 home games, according to NHL Stats. The Rangers mustered only 13 shots on goal, which stands as their worst mark of the season. Sullivan openly questioned their effort, saying, “We got out-competed from the drop of the puck.” And they sustained their most devastating injury of the season to this point, losing Fox to a left-shoulder ailment that’s kept him out in every game since. — Mercogliano
Team strength: Goaltending
I touched on both goalies in the midseason MVP category. In total, New York entered play Monday with a .916 team save percentage, good for third in the league. Quick has been one of the best No. 2s in the league, and Sullivan spoke highly of Shesterkin after Saturday’s loss on Long Island.
“We don’t always give him the goal support that he probably deserves, but he certainly makes a lot of timely saves for us night in and night out,” he said. “To have that guy in goal, certainly it gives our guys a big boost of confidence.” — Baugh
Primary concern: Scoring
After years of trying to make the Rangers harder to play against, Drury has overcorrected by stripping the roster of its skill and creating a serious finishing problem. It’s left New York flirting with the wrong kind of history. Saturday’s 2-0 loss to the rival Islanders marked the eighth time the Rangers have been shut out this season, putting them on pace to tie the 2006-07 Columbus Blue Jackets for most in the modern era.
It’s not just about being shut out in nearly 40 percent of their games, either. The offensively challenged Blueshirts ranked 31st with an average of only 2.55 goals per game through 40 contests and had failed to score in 56 of 120 total periods, meaning they’ve put up zeros 46.7 percent of the time. That scoreless period percentage jumps to 61.1 on home ice (33 out of 54).
The issues are spread from the top of the lineup to the bottom. The Rangers’ go-to forwards aren’t as productive as they were earlier in their careers, their defense corps offers no offensive push outside of Fox, and their depth forwards lack any scoring punch at all. It’s a recipe for ineptitude, with little help coming through the pipeline beyond top prospect Gabe Perreault. — Mercogliano
Biggest question: Buy, sell or thread the needle?
The Eastern Conference’s mediocrity should keep the Rangers in the playoff race deep into the season, but it’s become painfully clear that this is a team — and an organization — at a crossroads.
On one hand, they have a win-now core that’s built around four forwards 32 or older — Panarin, Miller, Zibanejad and Vincent Trocheck — and just made Sullivan the NHL’s highest-paid coach. Owner James Dolan expects them to be competitive, and Drury is under pressure to make it happen.
Conversely, the ceiling for this diminished roster is probably squeaking into the postseason and praying Shesterkin can steal them a round, which would only prolong the inevitable. The Rangers need to get younger, faster and more skilled, and they have a chance to jump-start that process before the March 6 trade deadline.
Panarin is on an expiring contract, with a real possibility that this could be his final season in New York. If that’s the case, it would be malpractice not to start a dialogue about waiving his no-movement clause. There are tough conversations to be had around other veterans to consider dealing while they still have value, as well as young players such as Lafrenière and Brennan Othmann, who have hit a developmental wall.
The likeliest outcome is the thread-the-needle approach Drury employed last year, which meant selling off players who don’t factor into future plans while simultaneously looking to add pieces who can help right away. But half-measures often leave teams stuck in the mushy middle. — Mercogliano
