{"id":413834,"date":"2026-01-17T23:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/413834\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T23:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T23:19:07","slug":"new-york-rangers-roll-to-victory-a-day-after-letter-to-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/413834\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Rangers roll to victory a day after letter to fans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jan 17, 2026, 04:52 PM ET<\/p>\n<p>PHILADELPHIA &#8212; A day after general manager Chris Drury outlined in a letter to fans that his team will embark on a &#8220;retool,&#8221; the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/team\/_\/name\/nyr\/new-york-rangers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">New York Rangers<\/a> went out and finally played like they might not need one.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/2562637\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mika Zibanejad<\/a> became the Rangers&#8217; career leader in power-play goals and his three-goal performance tied the team record for most career hat tricks in New York&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/game\/_\/gameId\/401803106\/rangers-flyers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">6-3 victory<\/a> over the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/team\/_\/name\/phi\/philadelphia-flyers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Philadelphia Flyers<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old Swede scored with a man advantage at 5:38 of the second period, giving him 117 power-play goals and moving him past <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/2016853\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Camille Henry<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/5833\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Kreider<\/a>, who each had 116 for New York.<\/p>\n<p>Zibanejad&#8217;s first-period goal at 7:26 put the Rangers ahead to stay at 2-1, and he completed his scoring at 8:25 of the second, matching Bill Cook with nine career hat tricks with the Rangers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/3891952\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Artemi Panarin<\/a> added two goals and an assist, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/4874733\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Brennan Othmann<\/a> also scored for the Rangers, who snapped a five-game skid. The Rangers, whose last victory had come Jan. 2 against Florida, had lost eight of their last nine games. <a data-player-guid=\"edddea19-8c2d-f283-933b-d0f4193c80f0\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/2590852\/jt-miller\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">J.T. Miller<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/4697382\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Alexis Lafreniere<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/2563036\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Vincent Trocheck<\/a> each had two assists. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/3042069\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Spencer Martin<\/a> made 25 saves and earned his first win of the season.<\/p>\n<p>Rangers coach Mike Sullivan earned his 500th coaching win. Sullivan was a two-time Stanley Cup winner in his 10-year tenure with the Penguins. He parted ways with Pittsburgh after missing the playoffs for a third straight season and was hired by New York in May, after Peter Laviolette was fired.<\/p>\n<p>Editor&#8217;s Picks<\/p>\n<p>2 Related<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think four or five months ago this is where we thought we&#8217;d be,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;But that being said, we&#8217;ve got a job to do. And we need to start moving forward towards the next chapter.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Before releasing the letter Friday, sources said, Drury had meetings with the team&#8217;s leadership group, with the players and an individual meeting with Panarin. Sources described the conversations as &#8220;extremely candid.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers entered the weekend with the fewest points in the Eastern Conference and a minus-21 goal differential. They plan to be active in trying to move their players ahead of the March 6 trade deadline.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If changes are coming, then try to make the most of the time we have as a group, the group that we have right now,&#8221; Zibanejad said.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of Saturday&#8217;s game, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/3900169\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Travis Konecny<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/3114757\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Travis Sanheim<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/4565230\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Trevor Zegras<\/a> each had a goal and an assist for the Flyers, who lost for the sixth straight time. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nhl\/player\/_\/id\/4587815\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Samuel Ersson<\/a> made 22 stops in the loss.<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan 17, 2026, 04:52 PM ET PHILADELPHIA &#8212; A day after general manager Chris Drury outlined in a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-413834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}