They’re not going to tell you things are off the rails. But you have eyes.

You can see how wrong it’s gone for the New York Rangers. Eight days ago they were hitting the ice in Calgary, a 12-4-1 team that had gotten some incredible goaltending and timely scoring to get out to a fast start on the season.

Eight days later and it’s not only gone wrong on the ice and in the standings but in the executive suite and in the locker room. Friday’s 3-1 loss to the Flyers was the Rangers’ fifth straight regulation loss, something they haven’t done since the end of the 2020-21 season — a stretch of defeats that included the Tom Wilson-Artemi Panarin incident, Madison Square Garden’s subsequent public criticism of the NHL and the firings of president John Davidson and general manager Jeff Gorton.

That they haven’t had as bad a week in four years is a window into how good the Rangers have been since then. That the second bad week in four years has brought almost as much turmoil to this organization as the last one did is a window into how this team and its bosses seemingly get tossed into a full-blown panic when things start to snowball.

And this time there’s not the previous three seasons of rebuilding to blame for the pent-up frustration. The bad eight days in November still have left the current Rangers in a playoff spot, still with one of the best goalies in the league and a collection of pretty good talent all around.

The past eight days for the Rangers:

Thursday: Lose 3-2 in Calgary
Saturday: Blown out in Edmonton
Monday morning: Word leaks that Drury is open to trades and mentions Kreider, Trouba to league GMs
Monday: Lose 5-2 to STL
Wednesday: Lose 4-3 in Carolina
Friday: Lose 3-1 in PHI

— Peter Baugh (@Peter_Baugh) November 29, 2024

So this chaos, these incredibly bad vibes, are all self-inflicted. And you can see what Chris Drury’s overreaction last weekend has wrought.

A first period on Friday so thoroughly lifeless and borderline embarrassing that only Igor Shesterkin stood between the Flyers and a 5-0 or 6-0 lead. Panarin getting into it with an entire five-man Flyers crew after a whistle with zero teammates coming in to back him up. An entire team, one that’s played decently in its own end before, seemingly allergic to the space between the hash marks in the Rangers end, where the Flyers produced about a dozen high-danger scoring chances in the first 40 minutes.

Then, finally, Shesterkin — you know, the guy the Rangers need to pay to be able to keep even a faint chance of being a Stanley Cup contender — skating off on his own, acknowledging no one, after yet another loss.

“That can’t happen to a team that’s sitting here, looking for ways to win hockey games,” Peter Laviolette said afterward.

As we outlined earlier on Friday, the reverberations of Drury’s leaguewide “come and get it” memo to the other 31 GMs on Sunday are still being felt. Chris Kreider, one of the two Rangers veterans mentioned by name in Drury’s note, is still out with the back spasms he so carefully noted in Raleigh a couple of days ago you’d have thought he had one of those anatomy charts next to him.

That may have been the longest-tenured Ranger’s way of telling the hockey world that he’s not feeling so hot and trading for him might not be in their best interest.

Jacob Trouba, the other named party in the note, hasn’t been hitting much lately. He hasn’t been talking much to the media, except when he has to answer for the GM trying to trade him for the second time in about four months. The idea of Trouba tossing his helmet and yelling at his own bench to wake (the f—) up, as he did around this time two seasons ago after a huge hit and fight, seems absurd at the moment.

You can call that indifferent behavior unprofessional. Unbecoming of an $8-million-a-year guy who wears the C. All true. But think about how we got here — Drury tried to put the cart before the horse in June, attempting to force Trouba into a move before the player was ready and before any other team, the Red Wings included, had even given much thought to acquiring him. That poisoned the situation.

Now it seems irreparable. No one is trading for Trouba with him playing like this, not now and maybe not this summer without a decent sweetener in the deal.

And there is a domino effect. Trouba was named captain despite not being a Ranger as long as some teammates because he did all the things you need to do as a leader. Fans may have wanted Kreider or Mika Zibanejad or Adam Fox, but it’s Trouba who has wrangled the team behind the scenes, has gone to coaching and management with player requests and has been an intermediary on sensitive issues between the front office and the locker room.

Kreider prefers to do his leadership work one-on-one with younger players. Zibanejad and Fox are lead-by-example types, very soft-spoken otherwise. It’s not a boisterous room filled with outsize personalities and Trouba was the guy they all looked to for leadership. Now, he’s adrift; it’s not that surprising the ship is listing too.

In such a crucial year, with Shesterkin due for big money, Alexis Lafrenière already cashing in (and not doing a whole lot since securing the bag) and K’Andre Miller mounting a very curious campaign to earn a big extension, the Rangers needed calm. They needed a steady hand.

They’ve got a snow globe getting worked over by a jackhammer at the moment. All in just eight days — off-ice turmoil, on-ice disinterest, you name it.

It’s some kind of world record for how fast this thing has fallen apart. The Rangers were within two games of a Stanley Cup Final back in June, a team that had flaws but enough skill in net and up front to feel like a contender for at least a little while.

The Barclay Goodrow saga, with Drury informing the alternate captain and well-liked teammate that he’d be on the 2 p.m. waiver wire at about 1:45, didn’t get the offseason going in the right direction. The Trouba thing hamstrung Drury’s attempts to remake the top four of his defense and also had the effect outlined above.

Now, at the first sign of real trouble this season, it’s a tire fire.

What will Saturday bring? The Canadiens, another young, fast team, come to the Garden. The Rangers have missed Filip Chytil, sure, as well as Kreider, but even at full strength this season they’ve looked painfully slow — either to react to teams counterattacking off turnovers or simply tracking back on a regular old rush. During this losing streak, they’ve stopped defending off O-zone possessions by opposing teams, leading to situations like Friday’s three-on-Shesterkin down low off a faceoff.

So what’s next? Do you strip Trouba of the C? Put him or someone else on waivers? All that does is further humiliate a core player, one of the reasons the Rangers are in this mess. Is Laviolette next? That would mark three coaching searches for Drury in four years. What about Drury? There’s no indication the president/GM is on the hot seat here, but remember what happened the last time the Rangers lost five in a row.

The Rangers do need something to change and they are getting older a lot faster than you would have thought watching them play deep into the postseason two of the last three playoffs. They’re playing poorly. They’ve gone from a comfortable spot near the top of the Metro Division to peering nervously below to all the mediocre teams bunched up close behind them.

But all that’s really changed for the Rangers is their own boss making them more and more miserable. Hard to see how that helps — or how it gets fixed soon.

(Photo: Kyle Ross / Imagn Images)

In one of the craziest finishes in City Section championship history, senior Jacob Velazquez kicked a 32-yard field goal with no time left to lift Chatsworth over South Gate 38-36 in the Division II final Saturday at Birmingham High.

Jesse Leon was stopped short of the line to gain on fourth and one at the eight-yard line, giving the ball back to South Gate with less than 40 seconds left. Chatsworth called its last two timeouts on second and third downs to set up a fourth down at the two-yard line with eight seconds left.

South Gate quarterback Michael Gonzalez took the snap and ran around in the end zone until finally stepping over the back line with one second left for a safety.

The ensuing free kick from the 20-yard line was made off the ground, not on a tee, and the ball caromed laterally out of bounds without touching a player, resulting in a five-yard penalty. No time went off the clock and the Chancellors were awarded the ball at the 15, setting up the winning field goal.

“I didn’t think I’d get a chance to kick it there, but I was ready for the moment,” said Velazquez, who had made one field goal all season, in a league game against Granada Hills. “I’m always composed. Confidence is key. I knew it was good right away … it came off my foot perfectly.”

Velazquez was given the game ball and did not let go of it through the trophy presentation.

Sophomore Eric Myers carried 20 times for 143 yards, including a 17-yard run to cap the Rams’ first touchdown drive and a two-yard run to end an eight-play, 76-yard march that gave South Gate a 36-33 lead with 5:51 remaining.

Leon rushed for 141 yards and a touchdown for the third-seeded Chancellors (9-5), who lost to Fairfax in overtime last year in the Division II final at Valley College.

It was Chatsworth’s third section title and its first since claiming the Division II title in 1998.

South Gate (7-7) was seeking its first City title since 1988 when it won the 3A crown.

Iga Swiatek’s one-month suspension for unintentionally taking the banned substance trimetazidine (TMZ) comes down to picograms. World No. 2 Swiatek’s positive test, recorded August 12 and communicated to her alongside a provisional suspension September 12, detected 50 picograms of TMZ per milliliter of urine, which doping experts call a trace amount.

A picogram is 1,000th of a nanogram; there are one billion nanograms in a gram. Not the sort of usage that would provide any advantage in a tennis match.

Combined with Swiatek submitting her medications and supplements to independent laboratories alongside hair samples, those numbers led the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) to accept her explanation that she had taken a contaminated dose of melatonin, which she had used to help her sleep to combat jet lag.

Here are some more numbers.

On September 20, 15 days after Jessica Pegula knocked her out of the U.S. Open and eight days after being told she had tested positive, Swiatek announced she was going to skip one of the top tournaments of the year.

“Due to personal matters, I’m forced to withdraw from the China Open in Beijing,” Swiatek said in a statement. “I’m very sorry as I had an amazing time playing and winning this tournament last year and was really looking forward to being back there. I know that the fans will experience great tennis there and I’m sorry I won’t be a part of it this time.”

The announcement came after Swiatek spent the end of the summer rightfully talking about how exhausted she was following the Olympic Games in July and August, at which she took the bronze medal after an intense period that included winning her fourth French Open in five years, competing at Wimbledon, and not winning a gold medal for which she was viewed as champion-in-waiting. Skipping a tournament due to “personal matters” seemed to fit with that narrative. Fatigue. A medical issue. Burnout. Family stuff.

Under the broadest definition, “personal matters” does cover just about anything. That said, when someone uses that phrase, the immediate understanding generally involves some sort of health or family issue. It’s personal, and generally separate from something that’s either public or professional.

There’s also an implicit boundary request in the phrase: What’s going on is my own business.

But positive doping tests and provisional suspensions handed down by an anti-doping authority are not personal matters. Those are professional matters, in a profession that is very public.

GO DEEPER

Explaining Iga Swiatek’s doping ban, why it was kept secret and what it means for tennis

The ITIA holds off on announcing any positive test for 10 days so the player has the right to appeal the provisional suspension. If the player decides to appeal, the agency keeps the findings secret, and the player generally does, too. Then the process of testing, litigation and judging unfolds behind closed doors. In Swiatek’s case, her successful appeal allowed her to play the WTA Tour Finals and the Billie Jean King Cup Finals while that process was going on.

Swiatek’s team’s statement says that she “was unable to inform the public about the ongoing investigation”. The ITIA’s code subjects its officials, employees and associates to confidentiality, but nothing explicitly prohibits a player who has tested positive and is serving a provisional suspension during an appeal from explaining what’s going on.

So, if you feel that you have been misled the past few months, then join the club. “Personal matter” doesn’t begin to describe a positive doping test and the process that ensued, and in the the long run, that less-than-transparent explanation for her absence may end up harming Swiatek more than the positive test for unintentionally taking a performance-enhancing substance that likely had no effect on her performance.

Whose decision was it to describe this as a “personal matter”? Was any consideration given to saying something else?

On Friday, Paula Wolecka, a spokesperson for Swiatek, stated in an email that Swiatek had experienced great distress because she knew she was innocent of intentionally doping and had taken contaminated medicine.

“The decisions were made with the best intentions at every stage of the process, step by step, according to current knowledge of the team and circumstances,” Wolecka wrote.

“Iga did everything in her power to act fair, to follow the ITIA’s procedures and requirements and after the decision was officially published by the ITIA, provide everyone with as many details of the process as possible to be fully transparent. Being a good human being with a strong core of values is crucial to her and she does her best to act in line with it, on and off the court.”

In a video statement Thursday, Swiatek said, “The whole thing will definitely stay with me for the rest of my life.”

Both Swiatek’s one-month suspension and the decision not to ban Jannik Sinner for his two positive tests for clostebol, an anabolic steroid, have been conducted according to ITIA protocol. Both cases have also revealed deep wells of mistrust and anger within tennis from fans and players alike, confused at players being allowed to play while under investigation. Everything has been done by the book. The book appears in need of a rewrite.

There are also plenty of hard-nosed anti-doping officials who believe the science has gotten ahead of the rulebook. Swiatek tested negative multiple times before the positive test and then again after. That would indicate that she was not in the middle of a doping cycle, and the trace amount of TMZ suggested an unintentional use as well.

Iga Swiatek playing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on November 3. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

So perhaps provisional suspensions are not the way to go when the science says the athlete didn’t receive any benefit.

On a conference call with reporters Thursday, the ITIA’s chief executive, Karen Moorhouse, said the rules are in place to be fair to the players. “We’ve been absolutely transparent once they’ve reached an outcome,” Moorhouse said.

But is that transparent enough?

It’s true that players may not see much incentive for going public amid a period of uncertainty; that as soon as they announce they have tested positive for a banned substance and are under investigation, everyone will brand them as a cheater. Some no doubt would.

But a player is going to have to answer for the positive test eventually anyway. Would Swiatek, the ITIA and tennis be better off had they jointly come clean about this in September, rather than announcing it as done and dusted now, after Swiatek had spent the fall giving other explanations for her absence from competitive tennis?

It’s hard to not think so.

Now she has both tested positive and opted not to be “absolutely transparent” for two months. That’s not a very good combination.

It’s impossible to consider the Swiatek case without comparing it to that of Sinner, the world No. 1 in the men’s game.

Sinner tested positive for clostebol on March 10 this year at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif, and again on March 18, out of competition. The independent tribunals of the ITIA determined the now 23-year-old Italian bore “no fault or negligence” for the positive tests, and therefore wasn’t deserving of a ban. But all this only became public at the conclusion of the ITIA’s investigations and hearings in mid-August.

There wasn’t much transparency there either, and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has since challenged and appealed the ruling to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS), arguing that Sinner’s level of culpability should be upgraded to “no significant fault or negligence”, which would leave him facing a ban of up to two years.

GO DEEPER

Jannik Sinner’s doping case explained: What WADA appeal means and what is at stake for tennis

Through it all though, Sinner never explained anything to the public. He didn’t have to. He successfully appealed two provisional suspensions quickly enough to avoid missing any tournaments. Still, when the ITIA announced the details of the Sinner investigation and its ruling, much of the tennis-watching public felt like people had put one over on them.

That’s not good for anyone.

Swiatek repeatedly talked about the matter coming to a close in her video statement. Yet it’s hard to believe it has.

She will absolutely face more questions when the 2025 season begins in Australia in late December — about the doping violation, but also about why she didn’t tell us what was really keeping her off the court. So too will tennis authorities, about how a system which they say is working as designed can create situations in which so many people feel left in the dark.

 (Top photo: Robert Prange / Getty Images)