The New York Rangers Are in Pole Position for the Cup. That’s What’s So Unsettling.

It’s been 30 years since the team won a Stanley Cup, and the last decade in particular has been full of almosts. Now, after winning the Presidents’ Trophy, it’s time to prove that this year will be different.

Seven minutes remained on the clock Monday night when Artemi Panarin decided he’d pass on goal no. 50. The 32-year-old New York Rangers winger had already tipped in a third-period score in his team’s final game of the regular season, against the Ottawa Senators, and now he was rushing back up the ice with the puck on his stick and a nice, round number in his grasp. As I watched, I could hear in my head the voice of noted sports fan Larry David. “Hey, how ’bout the way Breadman’s playing?” David yelled in Curb Your Enthusiasm’s second-to-last episode (in an attempt to distract his ex-wife during an inquisition about his coital habits, obv.) “The way he controls that puck, it’s really amazing, isn’t it?” Yes, Larry, I thought. It is.

Anyway, then Panarin saw something and stopped short. He eased the puck over to a teammate, Erik Gustafsson, who sent it immediately onward to a streaking 22-year-old Alexis Lafrenière on the far side. And bingo bango: 4-nothing, New York! A delirious Madison Square Garden crowd singing the world’s finest go-oh-oal song! New Lafrenière career heights in everything: goals, points, confidence! A 55th Rangers win, setting a new franchise best! When Breadman bakes, the Blueshirts feast.

Panarin finished shy of 50 goals, but with the assist, he reached a different round number: 120 points, his most productive season by far. With two setups of his own on the night, true-blue Ranger Chris Kreider capped off his second 75-plus-point campaign in three years. With the shutout, New York star goalie Igor Shesterkin continued to regain his best form. And with the victory, the Rangers clinched the Presidents’ Trophy—awarded to the team with the best record in the NHL—and earned home ice for however long they can last in the playoffs.

The game made for a festive conclusion to an imperfect yet prolific New York season: a season in which the Rangers’ resilience was as impressive and as necessary as their razzmatazz. It also sent the team into this spring’s playoffs with renewed confidence and momentum—both of which the Blueshirts, as successful as they have been, still badly need. While the Rangers may have warmed hearts this year thanks to their special teams and their tall goon and their Player’s Player backup goalie, the cold, hard stats suggest that the road ahead could be dicey. They may be the NHL’s winningest team, but that also means they’ve got a lot to lose.

If I’d been given a heads up, back in the fall, that Shesterkin was about to have the lowest save percentage and the second-highest goals-against average of his career, I would have winced. And if I had found out that, on top of that, Mika Zibanejad would, at one point, embark on a 30-game stretch with nary a five-on-five goal, I’d definitely be sweating! Add in injuries to Filip Chytil, Blake Wheeler, Kaapo Kakko, Jacob Trouba, and (for a time) Adam Fox, and, well, big yikes? None of this would sound like an optimal set of circumstances—particularly for a Rangers team located in the same division as the New Jersey Devils, the young and lively rival that knocked New York out of the first round of the playoffs last season in seven games and seemed poised to be a Cup contender this year.

But hockey works in mysterious ways. The Devils, far from being a problem, wound up having a Murphy’s Law season in which they succumbed to every problem, taking care of that concern for the time being. The Rangers helped Shesterkin out, both through robust goal support and also with the aid of backup veteran Jonathan Quick, who went 9-0-1 in his first 10 delightful starts. Kreider began the season with 14 goals in his first 27 games to help pick up his linemates’ slack. Panarin, vibing with new coach Peter Laviolette, found a new echelon of play, a rising tide that also lifted up Lafrenière and Vincent Trochek. The Rangers’ power play and penalty kill stats both became top five in the league.

Still, midway through the season, some observant analysts remarked that the Rangers did have a clear weakness—a lack of goal production at even strength—that was being papered over by their special teams prowess. This was pointed out again a few weeks ago, even as New York continued to cruise. It’s a credit to the Rangers that, in spite of this, their results remained consistent. It’s a good sign of maturity that, in their final game against Ottawa, they knew they could clinch home ice with a win, so they went out and coolly got that win, like a bunch of freakin’ professionals or something! But despite New York’s record-setting performance this year, it’s difficult to ward off that mild, familiar wariness about what’s next.

On the eve of the playoffs, the Rangers’ even-strength mediocrity remains the biggest, naggiest question mark surrounding the team. (It didn’t help when the Rangers recently went nearly nine consecutive periods over the course of four games without anyone on the team notching a five-on-five goal.) The bad news is that, historically, strong even-strength play has been an important predictor of Cup success. The good news is that if there’s any team in the playoffs that is worse than the Rangers in this regard, it’s their first-round opponent, the Washington Capitals, who were sellers at the trade deadline but crept into the postseason almost by accident. (They’ve been buoyed by a breakout performance from their goalie, Charlie Lindgren—whose brother, Ryan, is a Rangers defenseman.) At this point, all the Rangers can do is what they’ve already done all season: keep attacking on those shorthanded chances, keep making those cross-ice passes, and just … keep on keeping on.

During the Senators game on Monday night, after defenseman Fox scored a shorthanded goal, the broadcast crew hit viewers with a trivia question that had some real Tungsten Arm O’Doyle energy. One game earlier, another Rangers defenseman, Braden Schneider, had also scored shorthanded. So when was the last time two different Blueshirt blueliners had achieved that in back-to-back games? The answer was [checks notes] 1932-33, when Ivan Johnson and Ott Heller did it. And hey, the Rangers went on to win a Stanley Cup that season! Then they did it again in 1940! And since then, 84 years have gone by, and they’ve won the Cup exactly one more time.

That was, famously, in 1994, 30 years ago, when both the Knicks and the Rangers played in the championships and O.J. Simpson was in the news. (The more things change, etc.) But don’t take my word for it—just ask Larry David. A week after name-dropping Panarin in Curb Your Enthusiasm, David wrote another beloved New York Ranger into the series finale. In the scene, an exasperated lady asks Larry whether he’s ever known true love, and he says that, duh, of course he has. “When Messier lofted that trophy,” Larry says, as wistfully and earnestly as ever, “I thought my heart was gonna burst.”

Unfortunately, since then, the Rangers have been letting me and Larry down, with big, blessed seasons that peter out to nothing as top stars grow quiet and good luck runs out. Between 2012 and 2014, New York went 5-0 in various playoff Game 7s, had the finest (and finest) goalie in all the land in Henrik Lundqvist … and still came up a few wins short of a Stanley Cup. In 2015, they won the Presidents’ Trophy, were led in points by a guy they’d acquired from Columbus (Rick Nash, the pre-Panarin) … and then ran clean out of steam in the Eastern Conference final against Tampa Bay.

Fast-forward to two years ago, once New York had made its way through some major organizational retools with surprising elegance. The 2021-22 Rangers, flush with house money, finished with 110 points on the season. They won two more Game 7s on their way to another Eastern Conference final against the Lightning. And then they lost again—this time, a reined-in Panarin got the lion’s share of the “What happened to that guy?” blame. “I would love to do stupid shit at the blue line,” Panarin admitted that spring to reporters, “but I can’t.” Everyone always tries to smarten up in the playoffs, but usually they just tighten up instead.

The Rangers’ postseason history over the past decade-plus has been a gift and a burden. In order to lose in the Cup Final once and the Eastern Conference final three times since 2012, after all, the team had to actually get there first, a path that involved all manner of happy, loopy wins along the way. Even so, the many times I’ve texted fellow fans some variation of “I’m genuinely not enjoying this at all”—and really meant it—during tense, low-scoring playoff games over the years add up, even if I conceptually understand that there are plenty of NHL teams whose players and fans would be thrilled to experience such exquisite discomfort! (Someday, Sabres.) In some ways, it’s a comfort to know I’m not alone, that even a guy as busy and important as Larry David is out there fixating on the Rangers so thoroughly that he brought them up not once, but twice in the final hours of his series.

At the beginning of this season, the normally shaggy-haired Panarin showed up with a shaved noggin. It was a minor thing, but it felt meaningful: a fresh start, a clear head. And as the regular season concluded on Monday night, that other small decision by Panarin—to pass that puck instead of trying for 50—felt symbolic, too.

It was a totem of talent and teamwork. It was a five-on-five goal, hooray! And it was a statement that there is still more left for Panarin and his team to accomplish. The New York Rangers have racked up a lot of unfinished business over the years. Now, it’s time to get started.