The New York Rangers have had a bad enough season as it is, what with being the worst team in the Eastern Conference and all, but charity like this is frankly unbecoming. They left Madison Square Garden Monday night tying a 71-year-old franchise record for fewest shots in a game with nine in a 2-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators, only to head to Toronto this morning for a game against the second-worst team in the Eastern Conference and finding out that, no, they’d actually attempted 10. In a phrase, damn it.
In the grander scheme, it doesn’t much matter, but in a season this forgettable, in a game this bad, why would you try to find an extra shot to make the night seem less abject? Statistical accuracy, sure. A more accurate reflection of reality, fine. Still, in a game so otherwise bereft, finding that 10th shot seems almost antithetical to the tale being told here. The 10th shot must exist, clearly, but to what end?
Nine is just a better number. In fact, any truly valuable league employee would have gone through the tape and taken off a shot or two, just so the numbers could fit the greater truth. The fewest shots taken in a game is actually six, by Toronto, in a series-clinching playoff loss to New Jersey (and we’re sure the cheery Toronto mediocracy handled that well) in 2000. In a regular-season game, the record is seven, by Washington in 1978. Frankly, we would have been tempted to eradicate the Rangers’ third-period goal by Conor Sheary, but we are clumsy white-collar criminals and surely someone would have noticed if the final score changed. Sheary, for one.
In fact, because the truth must prevail, the extra shot, according to NHL.com’s senior reporter Dan Rosen, came with 4:25 left in the first period by Vincent Trocheck on what seems to have been a deflection from about 20 feet away, if the play-by-play is to be trusted. That meant that all the internet amazement over the Rangers only having two shots in the first period turned out to be a cheap canard, and the folks who noted this must all feel a bit used. We know we do.
But statistics are, as we all know, grossly misapplied across sports, and no, this will not be another brainless old-unhinged-coot screed against analytics. This is about the use of last-time-it-happened statistics, a lazy, stupid and potentially carcinogenic trope that tries to make “the first time that has happened on a Thursday with a waxing gibbous moon since 2023” somehow noteworthy. For instance, the last time a team had 10 shots on goal was all the way back in 2024, by Edmonton, in a 2-1 win over Dallas that clinched their trip to the Stanley Cup Final. That’s cute and all, but it happened 20 minutes ago.
But nine shots? The last time the Rangers did that was 1955. Now that’s a stat. Hell on a cracker, that’s 14 presidents ago, back when being president still meant something.
Instead, someone found a shot that somehow hit Trocheck, and suddenly the Rangers only did something that hasn’t happened in weeks. Last night’s game no longer has any curiosity to it—just another shoddy effort by a shoddy team having a shoddy year. If that’s what we were after, we’d have watched more Canucks games.
Frankly, the Rangers have managed to make last night’s game worse with the extra shot they found. The lesson? If you’re going to be terrible, be spectacularly terrible. Historically terrible. Make us care that you don’t care. The entertainment dollar is a whimsical thing, and only one team can win, so if you must lose, do it with pyrospectacular panache, and for the sake of the gods don’t go searching for post-facto reasons to avoid shame. Here at the wide end of the standings funnel, shame is exactly what we’re after.
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