How Can Anyone Love the New York Rangers After This?

In light of the recent sexual assault allegations against Artemi Panarin, the team’s response, and an utterly disappointing season, I can no longer make excuses for the Rangers or their fans’ behavior.

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How Can Anyone Love the New York Rangers After This?

My entire life, I’ve been a diehard New York Rangers fan, thanks largely to my late grandfather, who swore that he only survived his 1994 quadruple bypass because he watched the Rangers win the Stanley Cup from his recovery bed. I’ve been to close to 30 games, have chirped with opposing teams’ fans during mid-season bouts (one of which turned into an all-out brawl during a Rangers/Islanders Valentine’s Day game), and I own limited-edition merch from several streetwear collabs, as well as multiple jerseys and a signed 1994 framed picture. When my grandfather fell gravely ill in 2008, I got a tattoo for the team, and he lived another 15 years.

Loving hockey as a queer, left-leaning woman has always felt incongruous—hockey is still predominantly white and marked by a kind of racism that’s frustratingly dated. In June 2023, there were only 34 Black hockey players in the NHL. In 2020, when then-rookie Rangers defenseman K’Andre Miller (who is biracial) took part in a Zoom to introduce himself to the fans, the chat was spammed with the N-word before someone closed the comments

Teams’ attempts to hold Pride-themed nights have been met with pushback from players, some of whom refuse to participate. When I attended the 2024 Stadium Series game, I got in an altercation with a New York Islanders fan who was screaming the F-slur after his team lost. Just this past February, American players praised President Donald Trump’s support for them during the Four Nations tournament, a month after Washington Capitals’ star TJ Oshie praised Trump on social media.

So on April 17, when the final whistle blew on the New York Rangers’ 2024-2025 season, it felt like a shrill marker of the end of something else: my fandom.


That same day, not long before the puck dropped, The Athletic reported that, in 2024, the New York Rangers organization and its star forward, Artemi Panarin, had settled with a female employee who had accused him of sexual assault. According to two sources, the alleged assault happened during a December 2023 Rangers road trip. The Athletic writes:

“Panarin and the woman, who was a regular part of the team’s traveling party, were at a postgame gathering at a hotel with about a dozen other players and staff members. Panarin allegedly took her phone and said he would only give it back if she retrieved it from his hotel room, the sources said. When she went to his hotel room to retrieve her device, Panarin pinned her down on the bed. She pushed him off, retrieved her phone and left the room.”

According to the report, both the Rangers organization and the victim told The Athletic that “the matter has been resolved,” while Panarin did not respond to a request for comment. The outlet further reported that the NHL was made aware of the incident at the time and said in an email that “the Club retained an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation, which the League was fully apprised of. We consider the matter closed.”

Panarin and the Rangers organization reportedly reached a settlement with the woman in August, though employees noted how strange the ordeal was, saying she was placed on paid leave three months after the alleged incident, reportedly for giving a player anti-anxiety medication before a flight, which was when she told the team about what happened. While she was still on leave, “an executive for MSG Sports convened a virtual meeting that included multiple Rangers office staff members and a human resources representative,” during which “attendees were told not to talk to people about the woman’s situation.”

To make matters even more disconcerting, hours after this report was published, Panarin’s visage and season stats were emblazoned on Madison Square Garden screens ahead of the game. It felt, for many, like a slap in the face. Especially since NYR media had named Panarin the season’s MVP and the team’s “good guy” days earlier.

But alongside the outrage, there was a vocal group of people on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit alleging that the woman “cried wolf,” suggesting the reports of her giving a player anti-anxiety meds show she wasn’t “so innocent,” or maligning The Athletic reporter, Katie Strang. The denigration of women brave enough to speak out against harassment in male-dominated spaces is a tale as old and as derelict as many Rangers fans, but it still shook me.

It shook hockey journalist Avery Beaumont, as well. The two of us occasionally chat back and forth via Twitter DMs over our mutual love for the team, and when I asked him how he was feeling after this disappointing and upsetting season, he told me he was “taking a step back,” both in his reporting and elsewhere. “Maybe five or ten years down the road I can come back home,” he said.

Of course, Panarin isn’t the first hockey player—let alone athlete—accused of sexual assault: a trial centering five members of the Canadian hockey team began in London on April 22, based on an alleged sexual assault that took place during a 2018 Hockey Canada fundraising gala. In 2021, Joel Quenneville resigned as the Florida Panthers’ head coach after it was revealed that player Kyle Beach  filed a lawsuit against Quenneville’s former team, the Blackhawks, for “mishandling his sexual assault allegations in 2010.” And in 2023, former NYR forward Sean Avery (a player I grew up adoring because of his brash personality) was issued a temporary restraining order by his ex-wife, Hilary Rhoda, who accused him of both domestic and child abuse. 

But after these accusations against Panarin, the response from both the organization and fans, and a truly terrible season marked by an embarrassing playoff miss, questionable trades, and a still-technically-unanswered question as to why the social media team no longer travels with them, I can’t make excuses for the Rangers’ (and their fans’) bad behavior anymore.

Even though this team is inextricably tied to my late grandfather—and has long been a pillar of my family’s ideological structure—it’s impossible to justify supporting a league that’s sliced through with hate and a team whose fanbase has a soft, mealy, rotten part marring its skin. I need a Blueshirt break, and I hope the team uses this extra-long off-season to reevaluate. 

I’ll watch the PWHL instead.


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