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New York Rangers players celebrate a win
There is no denying the New York Rangers are the best team in the National Hockey League. Entering Saturday, March 30, no other team across the league has more points than the Rangers’ 102, has more wins than New York’s 49, or has a higher points percentage than the franchise’s .699.
Even then, the team has not convinced everybody about being a bonafide Stanley Cup favorite in the eyes of fans and former NHL players alike.
Former NHL defenseman P.K. Subban took to his account on social network X (formerly known as Twitter) and shared a video on March 29 explaining his reasons for not trusting the New York Rangers as a team in contention for the coveted Chalice of Lord Stanley.
“The New York Rangers may win the President’s Trophy, but they are not the best team in the National Hockey League,” Subban stated. “Yes, I know they beat the Colorado Avalanche last night, but they are not beating Colorado in a seven-game series.
“Colorado’s big dogs are bigger right now than the New York Rangers.”
Subban shared his video following the Rangers’ 3-2 shootout win over the Avalanche last Thursday. While mentioning Colorado’s “big dogs,” Subban added two images to his clip showing Avalanche players Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar‘s total points this season (298 points combined) next to Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck, and Chris Kreider‘s tallies (242) to back his take up.
“Good luck finding a defenseman on one night to contain [MacKinnon],” Subban said, “let alone seven games. Ain’t gonna happen.”
Paul Bissonnette Considered the Rangers ‘Fugazi’ but Changed His Opinion
Another former NHL player, Paul Bissonnette, had his own opinion to share with the world about the Rangers and their chances at truly contending for the cup this season.
Bissonnette didn’t record a video, but he posted a message on his X account following the same game between New York and Colorado played on Thursday.
“Avalanche dominated that game. Sad if the Dawgs streak is over. Seems like it’s hooped,” Bissonnette wrote. “Fugazi’s are bad news.”
Most people understood the first part of the message, in which Bissonnette referred to MacKinnon’s then-ongoing 35-game home point-scoring streak. The Rangers prevented the Avalanche forward from scoring a single point on Thursday, bringing his historic streak to an end just five games short of Wayne Gretzky‘s record of 40.
The second part, mentioning the “Fugazi” Rangers, seemed to confuse some people.
The use of that word follows an initial opinion shared by Bissonnette at the start of the season when he said “I think [the Rangers] are all frauds” on an episode of the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast on Tuesday, September 26. “(Expletive) the fugazis. No playoffs for you.”
A few months after that, however, Bissonnette changed his tone–and thoughts–about the Rangers. On November 7, following a Rangers win against the Detroit Red Wings, the former-player-turned-analyst wrote another message on X.
“For the realizes?????” Bissonnette pondered.
The 5-3 win over Detroit on November 7 was the first of four consecutive victories for the Rangers that month, and it was also the first of nine wins in their next 11 games.
The Rangers Are Getting Hot at the Right Time of the Season
After starting the season impressively, the Rangers slowed down a bit through January. In the first month of the 2024 calendar year, New York could only put up an ugly 5-7-2 after going 25-9-1 during the first three months of play.
Following that month-long slump, however, the Rangers started to click and returned to their winning ways. New York put together a 10-game winning streak from January 27 through February 24. After losing the next game on February 25 to the Columbus Blue Jackets, they have won 10 more games after that losing just four (one of them in a shootout at Toronto).
The Rangers have one game left in March at the lowly Arizona Coyotes on March 30 before entering April scheduled to play the final eight games of their season.
New York (49-20-4) is coming off four straight wins (the last three outside of regulation) against the Boston Bruins, the Florida Panthers, the Philadelphia Flyers, and the Avalanche, all currently in playoff seeds.
The Rangers will look to get their 50th win of the season away from Manhattan to wrap up March. Whether or not that ends up convincing more people about their contending status, we don’t know yet.
Antonio Losada covers the NHL for Heavy.com. A veteran sports writer based in Spain, Antonio has covered the NBA, NFL and soccer for over 10 years, with bylines at SB Nation, FanSided, Yahoo Sports, FanGraphs, RotoBaller and more. He has also been nominated for multiple FSWA awards, including Fantasy Football Writer of the Year and DFS Writer of the Year. More about Antonio Losada
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