Rangers hoping momentum from road trip can carry them to elusive Garden win

The numbers paint one picture. They depict the Rangers as one of two teams — along with the Kings — to not win a game on home ice this season. They illustrate that the Blueshirts have been outscored at the Garden 15-6 and went more than 180 minutes without a goal to open the season.

But in the eyes of J.T. Miller, the sample size remains small.

The Blueshirts have played just five of their 41 home games this year and hold just an 0-4-1 mark.

The sixth match will unfold Tuesday night when they host the Hurricanes, look to win their fourth consecutive game and carry over the strides from the recent West Coast trip where, for the first time this season, strong play blended with earned points consistently. When the Rangers dropped back-to-back home games before leaving for Calgary, head coach Mike Sullivan said they “started to lose our swagger,” and he thought they rediscovered it with the trio of wins.

The next step from the Blueshirts involves transferring that production back to a 60-minute window at the Garden. They’ve already orchestrated a winning streak. Their offense has started to score more. And when asked if the Rangers finally securing that elusive first home win of the season would lift a weight off their shoulders, Mika Zibanejad jokingly answered, “Yeah, I guess I don’t have to answer any questions about it.”

“You want to win at home,” Zibanejad said Monday after the Rangers practiced Monday. “You want to make sure that you create a feeling at home where it’s a tough — should be a tough building to come in and play against us.”

As recently as 2023-24, the Blueshirts possessed the second-best home record in the league, according to Stat Muse. There was tangible evidence of the Garden providing an advantage. They went 30-11-0 that year on home ice, collecting 60 points and anchoring what ended as a Presidents’ Trophy-winning season.

But this year, outside of a point against the Sharks, the Rangers have been silenced in home games. They didn’t collect their first home goal until their fourth game, though they’ve recorded 55 high-danger chances compared to allowing just 36 for their five opponents, according to Natural Stat Trick.

But Sullivan said the Rangers aren’t trying to play a certain style at home and then a different style on the road. Miller said they’re not thinking about that, either. The results just haven’t followed at the Garden yet.

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“Is there a human element associated with playing at home versus playing on the road? There could be a little bit of that,” Sullivan said. “I think the most important thing is just understanding what successful hockey looks like for this group, and I think that road trip provided plenty of evidence to suggest that if you play the game a certain way, we’re gonna set ourselves up for success.”

Part of that revolves around a fast start, Miller and Zibanejad said. The 5-1 loss to the Flames last week provided a “little kick in the ass” at the start of the road trip, Miller said, and after they left Calgary, better starts became their focus.

The Blueshirts scored first in each of their next three games and ended up collecting all six possible points. When they start well, Miller said, they tend to play well, and they’ve only scored first in one home game.

An early lead against the Hurricanes — a Metropolitan Division measuring stick, with top two finishes in each of the past four seasons — would prevent any lingering reminders of the early season home drought materializing. It would energize the Garden crowd. It would create momentum that has been missing. It would allow the Blueshirts to avoid pressing again, too.

And it would allow their patience, their trust in their style, their belief — one reiterated over and over again as the home losses stacked together — that at some point the results would flip, to encounter some validation.

“At the end of the season, when you look back and it’s a really bad home record, then maybe we can look into that,” Miller said. “But I still think it’s early on. Definitely had some performances we need to take more pride in, in the sense of our building and making it harder on opponents coming in, no doubt.

“But it’s a pretty small sample size so far to get worked up about.”