Connor McDavid needed 50 seconds Monday night to remind the Rangers what their season has turned into. That’s how long it took him to score, and it means New York has now allowed the opening goal for a fourth straight game, this time against the Edmonton Oilers at Madison Square Garden.
Final score was 4-1.
Pavel Dorofeyev got the lone goal for New York in the second period, and from there the Oilers just played out the clock, because that’s what good teams do when you spot them a goal before most people have found their seats.
Blame the loaded Edmonton roster if it makes you feel better. The real culprit is a 1-5-1 stretch that’s dropped a team that looked completely fine in October to 7-7-1, fifth in the Metro, 13th in the East. Fifth. In the Metro. A division with two teams openly rebuilding.
New York hasn’t led in a hockey game since October 22 in Toronto, and even that barely counts, they were up for 90 seconds before the Maple Leafs tied it back up and went on to win. Ninety seconds. Blink and you’d have missed the whole thing. They’ve gone longer without a lead than it takes to get a table at some Midtown spot on a Friday night.
And it’s not isolated to Monday. They allowed the opening goal 1:15 into a loss to the Kings earlier in this same stretch. At some point “slow starts” stops being a scouting note and starts being the entire identity of the team.
Mike Sullivan basically admitted as much after the Edmonton game: “We’re giving up the first goal too often. That’s unacceptable. When you spot a team a goal in this league, you’re fighting uphill the whole night.” He’s not wrong.
He also can’t say that for a fifth straight week and have anyone believe it’s still a one-off.
J.T. Miller talked about the inconsistency being frustrating, about flashes early in the year that haven’t turned into strung-together wins.
Fine.
Flashes are nice. Flashes don’t move you up the standings.
This is probably still fixable. This exact team started 5-7-2 back in 2019-20 and then went on a 32-16-5 run the rest of the way to make the playoffs for the first time in years. Adam Fox is still Adam Fox, so the talent is fine. The problem is the first five minutes of every single game, and that gets fixed in practice, not with a fire sale.
Also this happened this week, somehow on purpose: the NHL and Fanatics dropped the new Hometown Remix alternate for all 32 teams. New York got a navy design with a scaled-down Lady Liberty logo over the heart and stair-step red NEW YORK lettering across the chest. Fans are already fighting about whether it’s “too safe.” Great debate. Really important stuff.
I do think the Rangers should be banned from participating in alternate jersey programs until they learn to embrace whimsy for once in their goddamn lives https://t.co/KvcVE2aCGm
— JEFF (@jeffisrael25) November 2, 2026
Argue about the sweater all you want, it’s a good-looking jersey and it changes exactly nothing about Tuesday night. The real emergency is that nobody in Original Six blue has protected a lead since late October.
Three games this week fix all of this talk immediately. Home against St. Louis, home against Philly, then out to Seattle to open the road trip. Score first in literally one of those and watch how fast this entire conversation disappears.
