2025 Rangers Season Previews: Will Borgen

This article is part of an ongoing series of Rangers Season Previews, taking a close look at what we can, and should, expect from each member of the 2025-26 New York Rangers. To read other articles in this series, go here.

As an atmosphere of dysfunction hung over the New York Rangers for the duration of last season, the area of their on-ice game that suffered the most was their team defense.

While forwards play a major role in team defense, the natural first position group to look at when a team is bleeding high-danger opportunities for the opponent is the one with the word "defense" in its name. The Rangers' defensemen struggled last season. Outside of the brilliant Adam Fox—who still has another gear he can reach when he's right—no blueliner was able to put together a consistently strong campaign.

One player who flashed well at times but poorly at others was Will Borgen. If the Rangers are to improve their backend play, Borgen will need to be a driving force in making that happen.

Previous Performance

Borgen joined the Rangers last December as the key returning piece in the trade that shipped Kaapo Kakko out to the Seattle Kraken. A fourth-round pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 2015, Borgen played collegiately at St. Cloud State before breaking into the NHL in 2018-19. After a four-game cup of coffee that season, he saw another 10 games the following year before the Kraken selected him in the 2021 expansion draft.

Borgen became an NHL regular with the Kraken, but never averaged more than 17:35 of total ice time in a single season, and was at 15:12 per game before the Rangers acquired him.

Immediately, the Rangers thrust Borgen into a mainstay second-pairing role that ultimately saw him average 18:18 of total ice time per game as a Blueshirt. The Rangers have always loved defensemen with size, and Borgen's combination of that (he is 6-3) and decent skating ability can help him look good under the eye test.

Of course, there's more to evaluate than just the eye test. Never known for his offense despite his physical abilities, Borgen managed to tally four goals and nine assists in his 51 games with the Rangers, after only one goal and one assist in 33 games with the Kraken.

As for defense, well, let's just say Borgen didn't do much to assuage the Rangers' already-dismal play. At five-on-five, the team actually yielded more expected goals and high-danger chances with him on the ice than without him, on average.

Borgen ranked second-to-last among Rangers defensemen with at least 250 minutes played in five-on-five on-ice expected goals-for percentage (44.71 percent). He also ranked last in five-on-five high-danger chance share (42.53 percent).

Despite the suboptimal underlying results, general manager Chris Drury signed Borgen to a five-year extension with an average annual value of $4.1 million after only 17 games with him in the fold. So, a big chunk of the cap space Drury had managed to free up after jettisoning Jacob Trouba not even two months prior was and is now being taken up by another mediocre defenseman.

Expectations

Borgen is going to turn 29 in December. While he's a bit of a late bloomer at the NHL level, having not become a full-time player in the league until his age-26 season, the prevailing likelihood is that Borgen is pretty much what he is at this point.

Having said that, a new head coach in Mike Sullivan and different deployment might help Borgen. With Vladislav Gavrikov in the fold, the Rangers will probably lean even more heavily on their top pair, which will presumably include Gavrikov and Fox. Gavrikov, both with and perhaps sometimes without Fox, will likely also see a high share of defensive zone starts and matchup minutes. As a result, Borgen might not have to take on as many of those difficult minutes as he did last season.

Last season, Fox had an offensive zone start rate of 65 percent at five-on-five, meaning that out of all faceoffs for which he was on the ice, the share between starting in the offensive zone versus the defensive zone was 65 percent (neutral zone starts are not counted). Clearly, the Rangers leaned on him for offense, and did not have other consistently viable options for offense from the blue line.

Borgen, meanwhile, saw an offensive zone start rate of only 30 percent, as the Rangers used him in more matchup defensive situations. With the Los Angeles Kings last season, Gavrikov was deployed in a similarly defensive role (only 37 percent offensive zone starts).

Gavrikov's presence defensively should mean a slightly more even split of offensive and defensive zone starts for him and Fox as long as they are together. That should then lead to more balance for Borgen and his defensive partner, and as such, a slightly less difficult role for Borgen compared to the one he played last year.

The flip side, of course, is offense. Given Borgen's skating ability, the Rangers might have to look for him to spark more offense from the back end, which is not something he's done with any consistency at the NHL level.

Then we have to consider Borgen's likely defense partner: Carson Soucy. They have history together as a pair in Seattle across the 2021-22 and 2022-23 seasons. That would be good if the history was good, but it's middling at best: a five-on-five expected goals rate of 48.05, a high-danger chance share of 45.37 percent, and 2.29 expected goals for per 60 minutes.

It's difficult to expect Borgen to make a significant leap from the player he's been to this point in his career, but if it's not him, someone else on the blue line needs to step up to not only supplement the defense of Fox and Gavrikov, but to add some occasional offensive punch as well.

Predictions

Taking everything into account (i.e., new coach, role changes), I would expect Borgen to produce slightly better underlying results than he did last year, but to remain slightly below the break-even point in terms of both expected goals and high-danger chance share.

Unless (or until) Scott Morrow emerges to provide some meaningful offensive punch from the back end, I do expect the Rangers to try to squeeze a bit more offense out of Borgen and Braden Schneider – mainly because both are fairly good skaters. Look for Borgen to put up something in the ballpark of 6-8 goals and 15-20 assists. While not gaudy numbers, the Rangers need every bit of non-Fox offense they can get from their defensemen.

Besides the HockeyViz visual, all advanced stats were obtained via Natural Stat Trick.