PHILADELPHIA — In a matter of weeks, the Rangers have become the Giants and Jets.
The season has devolved into dysfunction marked by a fifth straight regulation defeat that matches the club’s longest stretch of futility since the tumultuous final week of the 2020-21 season — during which president John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton were fired days ahead of the dismissal of head coach David Quinn.
Now GM Chris Drury and head coach Peter Laviolette have the responsibility of fixing what has become a broken unit. It is still November, the Rangers still have a winning record of 12-9-1, but there is no time to waste for either of these gentlemen, and there is no time to waste for a cast of characters in the room who appear to have lost their will.
The empty-net-abetted 3-1 final here in going down to the Flyers on Friday afternoon flatters the squad. The Rangers were run out of the rink by a pedestrian opponent in the first period. They did not get their first shot until the 11:11 mark, by which time they were down 2-0 at the 4:14 mark on a pair of goals 1:10 apart.
They were ultimately outshot 15-3, with the scoring chances and high-danger chances coming in at 13-4 and 10-2 against, respectively. This was essentially a repeat of first periods last week in Calgary and Edmonton, where the Rangers seemed unprepared.
The league-wide memo distributed by Drury, advertising that Chris Kreider and Jacob Trouba were among the many available, seems to have blown up in the GM’s face.
Why he would have sent that missive instead of peeling the paint off the wall in no uncertain terms in a face-to-face meeting with the team in the room either on an off day or after a game is beyond me.
The Rangers have a lame-duck captain who seems to have checked out. Perhaps that’s only natural. Trouba knows the Rangers had every intention of trading him in the offseason, before he used whatever leverage he could to block a deal. He knows he is on the block now.
I was wrong about Trouba. I had thought his bond with his teammates would exceed his distaste for the hierarchy. But, and likely subconsciously, Trouba has become a pedestrian, which is something no one would ever have said before.
He performed an olé while ushering Travis Konecny to the net for the 2-0 goal that would have made Roger Dorn from “Major League” blush. Over the past 16 games, in which the Blueshirts have gone 7-9, Trouba has been on for nine goals scored and 19 against with a 43.71 expected goal share. He has disappeared as a physical force.
This has become unhealthy.
This has become an untenable situation.
Of course, this is not on Trouba alone. Laviolette — who said the team was “outworked” — and his staff surely share the blame for the Rangers’ lack of urgency out of the gate. They surely share the blame for incoherence in the defensive zone.
Again and again Friday, the Rangers did not look ready. They looked like they did not quite care.
Perception may not be reality, but it is damning.
“Yes, it looks like we are not ready, but in the locker room, we tried to bring energy,” Artemi Panarin, who has scored in only one of the past nine matches, told The Post. “It was not a bad game in Carolina [4-3 on Wednesday], so it was not bad [in the room] before this game.
“But same result.”
Igor Shesterkin was brilliant, making a succession of Grade A saves that prevented his team from being buried alive over the first 12 minutes. There was one turnover after another, one lost battle after another, one mental mistake after another, one odd-man rush after another.
If this had been the first time, if this had been the second time, maybe even if this had been the third time, it could be excused. There was no excuse. There has been no excuse. There is no excuse.
Adam Fox, who again Friday proved he is in as deep a funk as anyone with a series of mistakes, talked about a team-wide lack of confidence. That is probably part of it.
“Just not coming out with urgency,” No. 23 told The Post. “I don’t know if I could pinpoint one thing. It’s not one guy, either. All of us seem not ready to go in the first. We’ve been saying how hard it is to come back if you go down a goal or two, you’re defending a lot, shots are 15-3, and it’s not good enough. We’ve been saying that for a while. Definitely something has to change with our starts.”
Definitely something has to change over 60 minutes. The Rangers steadied after the first period, Laviolette juggled his top six, later his bottom six, and changed a couple of defense pairings, and the team came close but never had the all-out puck-possession push that might have tilted the game their way.
Negativity seems to have swamped this team that has been off-kilter since the start of the season. Something has to give, and someone needs to go.
I am not talking about Aaron Rodgers.
