Rangers vs. Ducks: Quacked
A looser Rangers team, a familiar Jacob Trouba moment, flashes from Robertson and Othmann, and the uneasy reality that losing might actually be doing its job.
- As Joe has been telling you, losing is a good thing for this team. That The Letter 2.0 has dropped now hasn't changed any of that. With the sell-off now inevitable the thing that is in the best interest of the New York Rangers is to lose games and move as high in the draft as possible.
- That's not to say you're watching the games and rooting for the Rangers to lose. I'm not capable of that. In the confines of each individual game, I'm rooting for them to win. The difference is the level of acceptance of losing from now until the end of the season. I can accept that losing is best. I just can't cheer for that outcome during a game.
- The good news is, that felt like a very normal loss. By which I mean, there was nothing catastrophic about it. It wasn't as miserable as a lot of the losses we saw earlier in the season, with the Rangers completely impotent offensively and unable to find the back of the net. And it wasn't a beat down like we saw recently at the hands of the Boston Bruins and, before making some noise in the third period, against Ottawa. No, this felt like your average loss that you can expect when you lack sufficient offensive talent, are missing your best defenseman, and your goaltending is mediocre.
- Let's back up to before the game. To this:
I’ve been told this was Jacob Trouba’s doing 😂
— Zach Cavanagh (@ZachCav) January 19, 2026
Rangers media happened to be waiting outside the locker room at that moment, and I’m totally sure it wasn’t related at all, right?#FlyTogether https://t.co/XFIO8tmw1K
- Har har har. I'm not sure I can sufficiently express the amount of contempt I have for Jacob Trouba. Of all the players who felt wronged in someway by Chris Drury and the management of the Rangers since before last season, Trouba is by far the least sympathetic, largely because he's done everything in his power to make himself unsympathetic. Barclay Goodrow was, objectively speaking, treated worse. And yet he managed to handle himself with a bit more quiet dignity and grace than Trouba.
- I obviously get that he's being a troll here. But that's exactly why he was a failed leader. Being a troll isn't something that good leaders do. Bringing his personal baggage into the locker room last season by continuing to wear the captain's C was not something that good leaders do. Going out of his way to find the media and whine to the extent that he did after being traded to Anaheim last year is not what good leaders do. I get that he's bitter, and up to a point I don't blame him. But he wants to whitewash his own role in the collapse of the team last year, and I'm not going to abide that. He's a villain in that story, plain and simple. I couldn't be happier he's not on my team anymore.
