Mike Sullivan and the New York Rangers finally delivered at home. As fans walked out of Madison Square Garden triumphantly for the first time in the 2025-26 NHL season, the two-time Stanley Cup-winning head coach sent his team a strong message.
It took a while—eight games to be precise—but the Rangers finally won a home game in the City That Never Sleeps. New York defeated the Nashville Predators by a score of 6-3, snapping their seven-game losing streak at Madison Square Garden.
Ending the hex isn’t necessarily a reason for jubilation, but it does put a smile on everyone’s face. However, it will all be in vain if the Rangers can’t maintain their form in the upcoming NHL outings. On that note, Sullivan delivered a clear message across the locker room in New York City.
“My hope is that we can use this win tonight as a big boost of confidence for the guys,” Sullivan admitted, via The New York Post. “The message has been, ‘Let’s continue to understand what that game looks like when we’re at our best,’ and we generate offense, we just haven’t scored as many goals. Tonight, we scored goals. Hopefully, that reinforces the process a little bit and just gives us that much more belief that if we play a certain way, we can compete with any team in this league.“
Empire state of mind
In the NHL, there are pros and cons to playing for any organization, and suiting up for the Broadway Blueshirts is no different. Dealing with the outside noise in a market like New York requires players to develop thick skin—it’s certainly not for the lighthearted.
As the Rangers battled through adversity and the grueling spotlight, Sullivan congratulated his players for maintaining the right mindset and ultimately ending the drought at home.
“I just felt like, from a mindset standpoint, the group was in the right place, in the right head space,” Sullivan said. “And that’s such an important part of winning. It’s your ability to control the ebbs and flows of the game, the adversities that you’re going to ultimately be faced with is an important element of winning. At home, that could potentially go the opposite direction — and it didn’t. I give the leadership group and the guys a ton of credit, just for staying with it.”
Paid off
Going into the matchup with the Preds, many eyes in New York were fixed on rookie Gabe Perreault—who made his season debut in the 2025-26 NHL campaign. Having been held scoreless through his first five career outings, Perreault registered his first point upon his first appearance on Sullivan’s Rangers.
There was something poetic about Perreault assisting Alexis Lafreniere on his first career point. With much speculation surrounding the Rangers’ development of high-end prospects, two of New York’s top draft picks in recent years combined for a beautiful tally. Sullivan and the Rangers had assigned a major task to the rookie, and it paid off as the Blueshirts finally slayed their ghosts. However, it will be too little a reward if they can’t keep it up.