Rangers knew they  had to pick up the pace, and they have

Standing in the visitors’ dressing room in Salt Lake City’s Delta Center late Thursday night, Ryan Lindgren was asked by reporters for his State of the Rangers address.

A few minutes earlier, the defenseman and his teammates had put the finishing touches on a 5-3 win over Utah which put them over NHL .500 for the first time since Dec. 20.

Naturally, Lindgren felt good about the win. And, moreover, about the way the Rangers have been playing heretofore in the calendar year 2025.

“As a team we’ve been playing a lot better ever since the [NHL’s holiday] break,” Lindgren said. “Kind of defending better. Playing better as a group. I think that means guys are going to start playing better, too. Yeah, we like where we’re at right now. We just got to keep it going.”

Entering Saturday night’s match at the Garden against the surprising Blue Jackets, the Rangers (21-20-3) appear to have rediscovered their identity after having spent the better part of two months in a very public state of flux.

Beginning with the 2-1 win over Original Six rival Boston on Jan. 2, the Rangers are 5-1-2 in the eight games they have played this month. Their 12 points and .750 points percentage in that span rank third and fifth in the league, respectively.

Even though eight games is a small sample size, it bears noting that the Rangers were a combined 10-17-0 in November (7-7-0) and December (3-10-0).

It’s not a dramatic sea change. But is it the beginning of an evolution?

To a man, the Rangers believe that to be the case.

“We were obviously searching for answers for a while there in December,” Lindgren said. “We knew where we were standings-wise, where we were at in the season and we needed to start playing a lot better to get out of that. And I think it was a mindset and we started playing a heck of a lot better. We got to keep it going.”

Because, as a result of their two-month period of self-reflection, the Rangers today find themselves seventh in the Metropolitan Division, 14th in the Eastern Conference, and 24th overall. With 37 games remaining in the regular season there are seven teams ahead of them in the Eastern Conference’s Wild Card race.

For a team that not all that long ago reveled in its Presidents’ Trophy-winning 2023-24 regular season and run to the Eastern Conference Final, this is decidedly not where they expected to be at this point in the campaign.

But it is, they acknowledge, the reality of the situation.

“We’re going to be playing hard teams for the rest of the season,” Reilly Smith said following the win in Utah, which gave the Rangers a 2-0-1 mark in the just-completed three game road trip against the Golden Knights, Avalanche, and Utah. “So obviously the first one in Vegas was important. That’s a tough team to beat and then move on to Colorado, and even picking up one point there is important. So we got ourselves off to a great start on this road trip and it was great to be able to cap it off this way.”

So, then, what are the Rangers doing now that is markedly different than what they had been doing earlier in the season? What has changed?

Simply, they are generating more while yielding less.

According to data culled from industry database NaturalStatTrick.com, in the eight games the Rangers have played in January, they have five more High Danger Goals For (11-6) and four more Scoring Chances Goals For (17-13) than their opponents. Additionally, they have generated 12 more Scoring Chances Shot For (99-87) and 10 more High Danger Shots For (51-41), while being virtually even in High Danger Chances For (66-68).

“We’ve been playing some good hockey,” Peter Laviolette said. “We just got to continue to do that. We got to remember what’s gotten us here. We got to take that into every game, that mindset of what works for us right now and if we do that we’re going to get a chance.”

Notes & quotes: Among the teams the Rangers are chasing for one of the two Eastern Conference Wild Card berths are the Blue Jackets (22-17-6, 50 points). Entering the game, Columbus was in the first Wild Card slot, five points ahead of the Rangers, due in part to its 10-2-1 run dating back to the 4-2 win over the Devils on Dec. 19.