The New York Rangers entered the 2025-26 season expecting a hired-gun coach to steady a talented roster. Instead they finished 34-39-9 — 77 points, last in the Eastern Conference and 30th in the 32-team NHL — and missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second straight season. For a franchise that had reached the Eastern Conference final just two years earlier, it was a steep and sudden collapse.

Sullivan’s worst season

The campaign was the first for head coach Mike Sullivan, the two-time Stanley Cup winner hired to bring structure and accountability to Manhattan. The 77-point finish was the worst single-season record of Sullivan’s coaching career, an unwelcome distinction for a coach brought in precisely to raise the team’s floor.

The Rangers opened the season on national television against Sullivan’s former club, the Pittsburgh Penguins. The symbolism — a respected coach returning to face the team he led to back-to-back Cups — gave way to a long, grinding year that never found traction. New York finished below the playoff line in the East and near the bottom of the overall standings.

A torn assessment

Speaking after the season, Sullivan described his feelings as mixed. “(My emotions) are mixed right now,” he said, acknowledging the team was “not in the position that we had hoped to be or where we want to be.” He added that everyone shared responsibility: “we’re all disappointed and we all have to take ownership for it, myself included.”

That ownership question extended beyond the bench. Several postseason report cards graded Sullivan more favorably than general manager Chris Drury, whose roster construction drew sharper criticism as the season unraveled. The argument from those assessments was that the coach was handed a flawed group rather than that he failed to coach a good one — though a 30th-place finish leaves little room for anyone to escape blame.

How the Rangers got here

The slide is jarring in context. The Rangers won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2023-24 and reached the Eastern Conference final. Two seasons later they sit at the bottom of the conference, having missed the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time in nearly a decade. The roster still carries marquee names, which is part of what makes the collapse so difficult for the organization to explain.

The structural questions now facing the franchise are familiar to any team that underachieves with a high payroll: whether the core is built correctly, whether the coaching change made midstream fixes possible, and whether the front office has the standing to oversee another retool. Sullivan’s contract and reputation give him security; the larger uncertainty hangs over how the roster is assembled.

What comes next

A second straight playoff miss reshapes the offseason. The Rangers will weigh roster changes, draft positioning and the balance of veteran salary against younger, cheaper talent. For a team that plays in the league’s most valuable building and carries among its highest expectations, finishing 30th is not a result the organization can absorb quietly.

Sullivan inherited a franchise that believed it was close. The 2025-26 season instead exposed how far it had fallen, and left the Rangers heading into the summer with more questions than the season was supposed to answer.

Verification

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Rangers' 2025-26 record?
34-39-9 for 77 points, last in the Eastern Conference and 30th of 32 teams in the NHL.
Did the Rangers make the playoffs?
No. They missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second consecutive season.
Who coaches the Rangers?
Mike Sullivan, hired ahead of the 2025-26 season. It was his first year in New York, and the 77-point finish was the worst single-season record of his career.
Whose job is in question?
Reporting after the season focused scrutiny on the coaching and front-office structure, with grades tougher on general manager Chris Drury than on Sullivan in several postseason assessments.