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tRY IT NOWThe Rangers’ season is almost over, but the drama that has plagued them since the offseason is not.
Calvin de Haan had something to say on Sunday, until the veteran defenseman decided it would be best to wait until after Game 82 had passed.
Joining an already-existing pool of disgruntled players in the Rangers locker room this season, the team’s trade-deadline acquisition intentionally opened a dialogue with the media to, presumably, express his frustration with serving as a healthy scratch for 18 straight games.
The 33-year-old made a comment about the way he’s been treated by the Rangers.
“It’s f–cked,” he quipped.
After confirming he wanted to talk before stepping onto the ice for an optional practice, de Haan, when he came off, had an animated conversation with a member of the Rangers PR staff that apparently changed his mind. The Rangers then informed the media that de Haan would be waiting until the end of the season to talk.
The Post confirmed with de Haan directly that it was his decision to delay; he stated he wanted to get more information before talking.
It was clear, however, the Rangers did not want de Haan to say what he had to say.
“I said what I said because I am frustrated, and any competitor who says that they would be happy in this position would be lying to you,” de Haan wrote on X after the situation was reported. “After playing 3 games for the team and going 2-0-1, I thought I, maybe, would have got[ten] an opportunity to jump into the lineup and help win some games.
“Did I help win those games I played? Maybe, maybe not,” de Haan continued. “But we still won and collected some crucial points to climb the standings. I understand the youth movement in the NHL, and I’m getting older in hockey years and I may not play every single night, [but I] feel like I can still contribute and help teams win.”
The list of Rangers who have spoken out about their frustrations with management/coaching is uncomfortably long this season. De Haan joins ex-captain Jacob Trouba, the since-traded second-overall pick in 2019 Kaapo Kakko, the since-traded Jimmy Vesey and Zac Jones, all of who have, at some point, spoken their unfiltered minds.
Trouba did the first day of training camp — the 31-year-old defenseman addressing the offseason headlines about resisting a trade out of New York in the name of his family.
“It’s a right of passage to get fired by MSG,” Trouba said months later, in December, after he was shipped to Anaheim.
Kakko did not mince words around the same time — the Finn calling the organization out on its tendency to pick a young guy out of the lineup, after he himself was scratched for the 2-0 loss in Nashville. And Kakko was traded to Seattle the very next day.
In January, Jones said he felt like he was “rotting away” after repeatedly getting taken out of the lineup during his tenure with the Rangers.
And later that month, Vesey said he felt like he was “dying” while having “no role or purpose on this team” during a nine-game stretch of scratches. He was traded, along with Ryan Lindgren and prospect Hank Kempf, to Colorado just over a month later in exchange for two conditional draft picks in 2025, Finnish centerman Juuso Parssinen and de Haan.
Now de Haan, who has been with the Rangers for all of 44 days, becomes the latest to reveal his displeasure with the club.
“I’m not trying to be the villain or gain attention or throw shade on the organization, I would have preferred a scrum setting to chat about how my time with the rangers has gone,” he continued on the social media platform. “As a player you have to respect the lineup decisions whether you like them or not, it’s just been frustrating not being able to compete and do what I love to do. I hope everyone understands.”
The Rangers as an organization, and president and general manager Chris Drury in particular, are going to have to take a long hard look in the mirror this offseason and evaluate how their actions contributed to the anger that seeped out of the room this season.
There have just been one too many players speaking out to write this off as an in-room problem only.