Colin Stephenson: For retooled Rangers, opening loss in Boston has familiar feeling
Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan speaks to the media on breakdown day at the MSG training center on Apr 17, 2026, in Tarrytown. Credit: Brad Penner
Boston was the perfect place for the new-look Rangers to open the new season Tuesday.
It was certainly special for coach Mike Sullivan to be in his hometown in front of family and friends as he coached his 1,000th NHL game. “I think it suggests that I’m probably getting older,” Sullivan told reporters at the morning skate.
Unfortunately for Sullivan and the new-look Rangers, who are trying to find a way to get back into the playoffs next spring after missing out the last two years, the end result Tuesday had a familiar feeling, and it wasn’t good.
Three Bruins goals in a 75-second span in the final four minutes of the game doomed the Rangers to a 3-0 loss in their 2026-27 season opener. And while the stunning finish wasn’t the thorough beatdown they experienced the last time they played in this building – when they lost 10-2 on Jan. 10 – it was the same score by which they lost last year’s season opener, to the Pittsburgh Penguins. And we all know how the season played out after that.
Being in Boston, with their retooled roster, gave the Rangers a chance to measure themselves against the team that effectively ended any lingering dreams they had of making the playoffs last season. This time, they had a healthy Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin in their lineup, after both players missed that January game with injuries.
And this result showed the Rangers still didn’t quite measure up to the Bruins, whose own retool a year ago had been kind of a model for what the Rangers hope to pull off. The Bruins missed the playoffs in 2024-25, but after a few roster changes bounced back last season to get 100 points and get back into the postseason. The Rangers would love to do that.
But the same problem that haunted them early last season killed them again Tuesday. They couldn’t score. Their biggest offseason addition, sniper Pavel Dorofeyev, had five shots on goal to lead the team, and his linemate, another newcomer, Oliver Bjorkstrand, had four. But that wasn’t enough to get the Rangers even one goal in 60 minutes against goaltender Jeremy Swayman.
Obviously, a loss Tuesday doesn’t mean the Rangers aren’t going to make the playoffs. There were 83 games left after Tuesday, after all.
But with a shortened training camp and preseason, Sullivan and his coaching staff put lines and defense pairs together on Day 1 and kept them together throughout the preseason in an effort to get the combinations to jell quickly. And the whole point of that was to find a way to score enough to win more games than they did last year.
GM Chris Drury, who announced to the fans six days after that 10-2 loss in January that he would retool the team, went out and traded for two defensemen, Sean Durzi and Marcus Pettersson, who upgraded the second defense pair. And the Rangers looked OK defensively, though that was thanks largely to the fine work of Shesterkin, who stopped 20 of 22 shots against him and bailed the Rangers out countless times.
There are going to be plenty more tests coming after Tuesday. Their home opener against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday will be another big one.
A year ago, the Rangers were 0-6-1 in their first seven games at Madison Square Garden, including being shut out in each of the first three, something that had never before happened in the NHL — and in five of the first seven.
So needless to say, the Rangers were looking to get off to a better start this season.
The Rangers themselves have been cautious not to make any bold statements about their own expectations. For now, they are only saying they want to believe they can play good hockey.
“Honestly, at this point, and how it’s been the last couple years, we’ve just got to take a game at a time,’’ Mika Zibanejad told Newsday last week. “Like, just — we don’t look ahead of ourselves. We don’t take anything for granted. We take a game at a time. We make sure our process is the right . . . And we want to build on that. And then obviously we want to win games.”
They’ll try again Thursday.
Colin Stephenson covers the Rangers for Newsday. He has spent more than two decades covering the NHL and just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
