The Rangers’ road honeymoon is over, and bigger concerns have emerged

SALT LAKE CITY — Asked at the start of the New York Rangers’ latest road trip about his team’s jarring home-away splits, coach Mike Sullivan conceded he’d never experienced such a disparity. New York entered the trip 9-1-1 away from Madison Square Garden but 1-7-1 at home.

“I really want it to change,” Sullivan said, then added: “We’d like to keep the road record.”

He got the first half of his wish.

The Rangers’ 3-2 loss to the Utah Mammoth on Saturday was their third in a row on the road and brought the team’s total losing streak to four. The road excellence was always going to peter out to some degree, but the recent run of losses spoke to what could be a deeper issue: The Rangers simply might not have the level of players needed to compete with top teams, especially when dealing with injuries. Vegas’ top-10 power play tore the Rangers up Tuesday. Colorado’s stars were overwhelming Thursday. Utah’s speed and persistence made the difference Saturday.

“That’s a young, fast team, and I just think we didn’t win a whole lot of foot races,” Sullivan said. “I didn’t think we won a whole lot of puck battles. And when you don’t win foot races or puck battles, you don’t tend to have the puck.”

The Rangers are down captain J.T. Miller, who is classified as day-to-day after sustaining an upper-body injury in Denver. Top-four defenseman Will Borgen is also out day-to-day. At least on Saturday, the Rangers didn’t look like a team equipped to handle injury troubles, which is what good teams do. All three of the teams New York saw this week, for example, are dealing with injuries of their own.

“We’re not the only ones,” Sullivan said. “We’ve got to find a way to bring more of a collective effort.”

Sullivan stacked his top line against the Mammoth, reuniting Artemi Panarin, Vincent Trocheck and Alexis Lafrenière. Panarin scored one of the Rangers’ two goals, but Utah still outscored the Rangers 2-1 with that line on the ice. Outside of that trio, New York struggled to generate offense. Natural Stat Trick credited the Trocheck line with 11 scoring chances at five-on-five. None of the others had more than three.

“For the first part of the season, we were creating chances, just couldn’t finish it off,” said Mika Zibanejad, who stressed the need for more offensive zone time. “Right now I feel like we’re not getting as many chances as we would like.”

“Obviously our five-on-five play hasn’t been the best,” Will Cuylle added. “I feel like we’ve got to get more pucks to the net, more guys in the crease and maybe bang in some dirty goals since the pretty ones aren’t really working right now.”

In total, Utah outshot the Rangers 34-22. The Mammoth had 64.21 percent of the five-on-five expected goal share, per Natural Stat Trick. As Sullivan said succinctly after the game, they got outplayed. With a 10-11-2 record, the team is now one of only three Eastern Conference clubs under .500.

If not for Jonathan Quick’s continued excellence in net, the score could have gotten out of hand. The 39-year-old made multiple saves with a high degree of difficulty, including on a JJ Peterka breakaway and a dangerous Clayton Keller look in the slot to keep the Rangers within a goal in the third.

“He’s a world-class goalie,” Cuylle said. “We’re lucky to have him.”

The rest of the team didn’t play to the same level. Passengers is probably too strong a word because it implies a lack of effort, but New York has too many depth players in its lineup that aren’t consistently making an impact, in part because they’re playing bigger roles than they’re built for. Jonny Brodzinski, for example, went from a healthy scratch to skating in the top six in less than a week.

Neither Taylor Raddysh nor Conor Sheary has points in their past eight games. Noah Laba doesn’t have one in his past six. Juuso Pärssinen, who has been in and out of the lineup, has none in nine. Having one depth player like that in a lineup is fine, but five or six is an issue. The roster general manager Chris Drury assembled appears, at this point, to be too thin.

As Zibanejad mentioned, New York saw encouraging early-season trends, even if wins weren’t coming consistently. In October, they generated five-on-five expected goals at the fourth-best rate in the league, according to Natural Stat Trick. This month, they’re 21st and under the 50 percent mark (47.89 percent). New York’s game is trending in the wrong direction.

Cuylle said his team needs to hit the reset button ahead of Monday’s home game against St. Louis. It’s the right approach, but resetting only does so much if a roster isn’t good enough.

Over the course of this week’s road trip, the Rangers didn’t look like it was.

Game notes

• In the third period, Matthew Robertson and Michael Carcone collided, sending the Utah forward into Quick. Quick remained down in pain, and a Rangers’ trainer went onto the ice to attend to him. Quick got to his feet and went through multiple movements, apparently testing his right leg. He was able to stay in the game, and Sullivan said postgame he believes Quick is OK.

• A failed Scott Morrow clearing attempt in the second period led to a Kailer Yamamoto partial breakaway, but the Utah forward lost track of the puck on his way to the net. It slid right to Keller, who flipped it into the net. The official initially believed it hit the crossbar and did not call it a goal, so the Rangers brought the puck up ice. Panarin had a dangerous look, shooting off Karel Vejmelka’s mask. Shortly after, the officials blew play dead, presumably having received word that Keller’s shot went into the net. After a quick review, they ruled it a goal.

Kells on the rebound!

All tied up at two. pic.twitter.com/GkJl1wAJqX

— Utah Mammoth (@utahmammoth) November 23, 2025

Had Panarin’s shot gone in, a chaotic situation could have unfolded. The officials could have rectified the Keller missed call as the Rangers were celebrating, then counted that goal while waving off the Rangers’ and turning a 3-1 lead to a 2-2 tie. Vejmelka’s save made sure that didn’t happen. 

• Sullivan stresses winning the net-front areas, and Utah did that on both of its first two goals. Peterka poked in a loose puck in the crease for the first, and Keller’s came right next to the net. The Rangers had one goal of their own impacted by net-front presence: Vladislav Gavrikov redirected an Adam Fox shot through Adam Edström’s legs and into the net in the first period.

• New York’s bottom six had a rough night against the Mammoth. The Edström-Sam Carrick-Pärssinen line got outshot 8-0 when all three were on the ice, according to Natural Stat Trick, and the Sheary-Laba-Raddysh line was on the ice for Nick DeSimone’s game-winner, which came after sustained Utah pressure.