Rangers' staggering home woes continue with another shutout loss

There is no home cooking for the New York Rangers this season. With their 3-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night, the Rangers fell to 0-5-1 at Madison Square Garden, while also dropping them to 6-6-1 overall on the season. 

That record, as of Tuesday, is the worst points percentage (.500) in the Eastern Conference. It continues what has been a staggeringly bad start at home, and one that is putting the team in a pretty deep hole in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

Rangers can not score or win on home ice

It is not just the fact the Rangers have been unable to win a game at Madison Square Garden through the first month of the season that is bad. What makes it even worse is they are not even able to score goals. 

Tuesday's loss was already the fourth time they have been shutout on home ice this season in six games, while they have just six goals at home overall. Five of those goals came in one game, a 6-5 shootout loss to a San Jose Sharks team that entered that game winless on the season.

Their goals scored by game at home this season are 0, 0, 0, 1, 5 and now 0 again. It is only the third time in franchise history the Rangers have been winless at home through their first six home games of the season, something they had previously only done during the 1943-44 and 1950-51 seasons (via Hockey-Reference StatHead database). The former team had five losses and one tie during that stretch, while the latter had three losses and three ties. That means this season marks the first time the Rangers have actually lost their first six home games to open a season.

Fans are already fed up with the Rangers this season

The Rangers were booed off the ice following Tuesday's loss, which was the first emotion that Madison Square Garden crowd showed all night. Their inability to score goals and generate offense, as well as the fact they were outplayed for most of the night, turned the usually boisterous crowd into something that more closely resembled a library. 

The Rangers' offensive performance was so bad that they managed just one shot on goal in the third period despite the fact they entered the period trailing by two goals. There was very little pushback and very little threat of a goal at any point. 

The Rangers missed the playoffs during the 2024-25 season and were determined to show that was a fluke. They traded, what amounted to be, the No. 12 overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft for veteran forward J.T. Miller, and then hired two-time Stanley Cup champion head coach Mike Sullivan away from their Metropolitan Division rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins. The hope was that Miller's tenacity and offensive game could help change the competitiveness of the roster and provide some much-needed goal-scoring help, while Sullivan could bring championship credibility to the organization.

What they might be finding out this season is that their problems were far greater and deeper than they previously imagined and that those two changes are not going to be enough to fix all of them. There is still a lot of hockey to be played this season, so they are definitely not out of the playoff race just yet. But at some point it is going to start getting too late to make up whatever early ground they lose in the standings with all of these early defeats.