The team was coached by Alain Vigneault, and the team was going nowhere. After years of pushing, pushing, pushing, trying its damnedest to win a Stanley Cup, the team would finish dead last in the NHL’s Metropolitan Division, eighth out of eight, and collect a paltry 77 points. The team would fire Vigneault, and it would have to figure out what to do next.
So in early February 2018, the New York Rangers sent a letter, signed by then-president Glen Sather and then-general manager Jeff Gorton, to their fans. It explained that the team would begin rebuilding.
“The decisions we make going forward,” Gorton later told reporters, “will be based on [the] long-term and not trying to save this season.”
