The New York Rangers want to win it all
While the National Hockey League has yet to resume since shutting down play in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the league is getting closer to a resumption of play with hub cities announced and a formal schedule released.
On Monday, the New York Rangers discussed their intentions with the New York Post and made it clear that they are not returning to play just to get back into shape.
“Win the whole thing,” Mika Zibanejad said, per the New York Post after Monday’s opening practice of Phase 3, via TSN. “We’re not here just to participate and just be another team. We want to win.
“Obviously we’ll take it game by game and series by series, but we’re here to win. We have a great opportunity like this, it’s a very, very different situation than a regular playoffs, but we’re here to win and we’re going to do everything in our power to do so.”
Zibanejad isn’t the only confident member of the Rangers’ organization either, with head coach David Quinn agreeing with much of what his star player had to say.
“This isn’t training camp,” Quinn said. “We are picking up where we left off, and I want that to be crystal clear to everybody here. This is not training camp. We’re trying to win a Stanley Cup.”
The statement of intent is quite a bold one from a team that was struggling prior to play being halted. The Rangers were sitting 11th in the Eastern Conference and would likely have missed out on the postseason altogether had the NHL not decided to alter its playoff format in their return to play plan. In fact, the Rangers haven’t reached the postseason since 2017 – missing out the last two consecutive years.
Typically, only eight teams in each conference make the playoffs but due to the current circumstances there will be 12 teams participating this year. Teams 5-12 in each conference will meet in a best-of-five play-in round while the top four teams in each conference will play round robin games amongst each other as they jockey for playoff positioning.
The Rangers are set to take on the sixth placed Carolina Hurricanes. Despite finishing significantly lower in the standings than the Hurricanes, New York will actually be quite confident heading into their play-in series. They won the season series 4-0 against the Hurricanes this year, beating them in both New York and Carolina. The last time the two teams met back on February 21st, New York won 5-2 at PNC Arena in Raleigh.
However, the Hurricanes were quite banged up throughout the season and are expected to get quite a few players back who were out injured. Those players include the likes of Dougie Hamilton, Ryan Dzingel and James Reimer.
The New York Rangers have not won the Stanley Cup since 1994, when Mark Messier led them to glory over the Vancouver Canucks in game seven of the final. The original six franchise has lifted the league’s most prestigious trophy a total of four times.
