Rangers vs. Sabres: Going Home Again
The Rangers finished the home portion of their season 14-21-7—and there was a stretch this year when 14 home wins would have seemed like a fantasy.
- The 2025-26 New York Rangers season is almost over. The home portion of the schedule is finally over. Their record at home this year was 14-21-7. That's not great. But—and be honest—there was a period of time earlier in the season that you would have been amazed not that they won 14 games at home this season, but that they managed to score 14 goals at home this season.
- In many ways that game was ideal. The Rangers feel behind 2-0. They showed some pluck in rallying to take a 3-2 lead in the second period. Then, the better and playoff-bound Buffalo Sabres (yes, that's a sentence your reading in the year of our lord 2026) posted three third period goals to win. The Rangers weren't embarrassed, but they also didn't earn any points to move up in the standings and damage their odds at a high draft pick any more than they already have.
- Joe and I have talked and joked a lot about tanking on the podcast. This week, we answered a question from one of you about an alternative "consolation" bracket playoffs to determine odds for the first overall draft pick. That's something that won't happen for all kinds of reasons, but the biggest reason is: it's not necessary. For the most part, NHL teams don't tank—at least not in the way that NBA teams can and do. The nature of the sport is different, which makes tanking harder. About the only way you could do it is to sit the vast majority of your top six and your top two defensive pairings, and probably your starting goaltender, and then call up about half of your AHL affiliate to field them against an actual NHL hockey team. But you don't really see teams doing that, do you?
- In that sense, there is no real tanking in the NHL. Most of the talk about the Rangers tanking has been tongue-in-cheek. It was just very, very Rangers for this team to be so bad for so much of this season, and then just when it would particularly benefit them and their future to be very bad, they start winning.
