Rangers vs. Senators: Road Weary
Alexis Lafrenière is playing the best hockey of his career, Pavel Dorofeyev finally scored, and help in goal may be on the way from Hartford.
- You have to admit, it's weird. Last season, this team couldn't buy a win at home. They were atrocious. This season, they have a whopping one (1) win on the road in seven attempts. Crazy. But that's hockey, Suzyn.
- If you're looking for silver linings to this game, I can give you a few. First, this is a game they lose 5-1 or 6-1 last season. There's no way you get that late second-period goal from Alexis Lafrenière that made this a game. There's no way they come out and dominate the early third period like they did.
- Second comes via our old friend the Deserve To Win O'Meter from MoneyPuck:
- For the second game in a row, this was not Dylan Garand's best effort. He had -3.46 goals saved above expected per MoneyPuck, and -2.18 per HockeyStats.com. That's definitely a step down from his performance in Toronto. But an important point here from Adam Herman:
I've made this tweet a handful of times throughout the years but NYR fans have been so spoiled by Lundqvist and Shesterkin much that they mistake normal goaltending for a problem. https://t.co/cMQilHOfWD
— Adam Herman (@AdamZHerman) October 23, 2026
- Two points here: The first is that the New York Rangers very nearly got at least a point out of that game in Toronto, and they pulled within a goal twice in this game against the Ottawa Senators. The game context does matter here. The second is that Herman is absolutely right. We've been so unbelievably spoiled by having a generational goaltender in Henrik Lundqvist, and another elite goaltender in Igor Shesterkin. We shouldn't let that wildly skew our perspective, which we really need to reset for the rest of this season with Shesterkin out.
