RALEIGH, N.C. — The benefit of having a core of players who have played together for so long is that they’ve shared so many different experiences they can collectively lean on.
It has been quite some time since the Rangers have been disrupted midseason by trade chatter involving major players in their own room, but the team has had its fair share of tough stretches over the years.
Last season, it was essentially the entire month of January.
The Rangers went from only dropping back-to-back games once through the first three months of the season to a four-game losing streak with two other sets of consecutive defeats in January.
Their record that month was 4-7-2.
After winning their final game before the All-Star break, however, the Rangers went on a 10-game win streak on their way to capturing the Presidents’ Trophy.
“Those are things that we can’t control,” head coach Peter Laviolette said of the outside noise before the Rangers blew a third-period lead and lost 4-3 to the Hurricanes Wednesday night. “What we can control is what’s in the room and how we attack the game [against the Hurricanes on Wednesday night]. “Every team goes through some ups and downs through the course of a year — we did last year. There was a trip out west where we weren’t playing very good, maybe in January, and ended up having one of the top years that we could.
“I just think it’s something you’ve got to work through. Most teams have to work through something at some point. It’s our turn right now, got to work through it.”
The Rangers’ 5-0-1 record out of the gate has turned into a 7-8 stretch, over which they have been outscored 47-39.
President and general manager Chris Drury’s league-wide memo to solicit trade partners is the kind of outside noise that’s difficult to tune out. For many players inside the locker room, that is a first.
But almost every season is guaranteed to have its trials and tribulations.
The Rangers hope this is just theirs unfolding right now, and they can get out of it soon.
“When everything is good, it’s easy,” Mika Zibanejad said. “It’s easy and there’s not much to talk about. When things are like this, hopefully we can look back at this in three months, six months, in three years, five years, 10 years — whatever it might be — look back and [think], ‘I’m glad we went through it and it worked for the better.’ In terms of coming together as a group even more and battling through this.
“You’re going to go through adversity at one point during a season, or maybe even more than once. We get it now, this is our turn. We work, we stick together and that’s all we can do.”
Igor Shesterkin stopped 26 of the 30 shots he faced in the loss Wednesday.
The Rangers won’t practice Thursday before they return to game action Friday at Philadelphia.
