Colin Stephenson: For retooled Rangers, a full-circle opener in Boston will offer early answers
Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan speaks to the media on breakdown day at the MSG training center on Apr 17, 2026, in Tarrytown. Credit: Brad Penner
Boston was the perfect place for the new-look Rangers to open the new season Tuesday.
It was certainly special for coach Mike Sullivan to be in his hometown in front of family and friends as he coached his 1,000th NHL game. “I think it suggests that I’m probably getting older,” Sullivan told reporters at the morning skate. But being in Boston was also significant to the Rangers because it was there that the season ended for them last year.
Oh, technically, the final game of the 2025-26 season was in Tampa in April, but the season effectively died in Boston last January.
Playing without the injured Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin, the Rangers were embarrassed by the Bruins, 10-2, in a national TV game on Jan. 10. And the result made it crystal clear to even the most ardent and optimistic supporters that the battle for a playoff spot was over with three months left to play.
Six days later, GM Chris Drury met with the players to inform them he was throwing in the towel. He then he issued a message to the fans announcing the team would retool. A month later, Drury traded Artemi Panarin, then over the summer he traded Vincent Trocheck, too.
So going back to Boston on opening night with their newly retooled roster – with eight new faces from last season – was kind of like a full circle moment for the Rangers. It was a first test to see how well their new-look lineup meshed, as they seek to put the last two years behind them and get themselves back on track to becoming a Stanley Cup contender again.
Obviously, a win or a loss Tuesday wasn’t going to determine whether the Rangers are, or are not, going to make the playoffs. There are 83 games left after Tuesday, after all. But with a short training camp and preseason, Sullivan and his coaching staff put lines and defense pairs together on Day 1 and kept them together throughout the preseason in an effort to get the combinations to jell quickly.
What the Rangers looked like against the Bruins could reasonably be considered a fair projection of who they are, albeit in a one-game sample. Did Pavel Dorofeyev look comfortable with his linemates, J.T. Miller and Oliver Bjorkstrand? Was the new second defense pair of Marcus Pettersson and Sean Durzi solid? How did 18-year-old rookie defenseman Alberts Smits hold up in his first NHL game?
The players have been cautious not to make any bold statements about their own expectations. For now, they are only saying they want to believe they can play good hockey.
“Honestly, at this point, and how it's been the last couple years, we’ve just got to take a game at a time,’’ Mika Zibanejad told Newsday last week. “Like, just – we don't look ahead of ourselves. We don't take anything for granted. We take a game at a time. We make sure our process is the right … And we want to build on that. And then obviously we want to win games.”
After falling on their faces out of the starting gate last season and never recovering, the Rangers naturally are looking for a better start this year.
“Yeah, of course,’’ Miller said Monday. “There's that fine line of not putting too much pressure on yourself to make sure you start well, but we're just going to worry about what we can control. And to a man, we're going to try to do that.’’
There are going to be plenty more tests coming after Tuesday. Their home opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday will be another, and that one may even be more significant than Tuesday’s. A year ago, the Rangers were 0-6-1 in their first seven games at Madison Square Garden, including being shut out in each of the first three, something that had never before happened in the NHL – and in five of the first seven.
So needless to say, the Rangers will be looking to get off to a better start this season. A win Tuesday, and another Thursday would have them feeling mighty good about themselves. A slower start, though, would leave them with lots of questions.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
