Will Borgen had the deck stacked against him when he first came to the Rangers. A trade that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with roster mismanagement, Will Borgen’s Rangers career was short and rocky. His 2025-2026 stuck to that theme, with inconsistent play that had some thinking he was actually playing injured. Nothing was ever confirmed, but that alone shows how rough the year was for him. Just another example of the dumpster fire the Rangers were last season.
What’s rather interesting about Will Borgen’s stats is that he was mostly ok in the grand scheme of things, but he didn’t really have one area he excelled. He did have one area where he was absolutely atrocious though, so when you take a step back and everything else is a wash, the one bad area stands out. For Borgen, that was zone entry defense.
Borgen’s player card and RAPM from Evolving-Hockey show a barely replacement level player who outperformed his expected offensive and defensive metrics. His 5 goals, a career high, likely contributed to his offensive GAR looking far better than his offensive xGAR. On defense, he might have been propped up by Matthew Robertson, whom he played 439 minutes with. All of Robertson’s numbers improved without Will Borgen as his defense partner, and while other factors play a role here, it’s worth noting. Borgen also played 368 minutes with Carson Soucy, which certainly impacted his numbers away from Robertson.
There’s a lot of grey in Borgen’s time with the Rangers, but it’s hard to paint a good picture of Borgen’s only full season with the Rangers. He just simply wasn’t good enough to move the needle and stabilize the second or third defense pairs. A bad trade that as made worse by Borgen being just another plug instead of a productive defenseman. He was given every opportunity to do so, and he just didn’t.
That said, he had flashes of strong play, especially early in the season. He was the best non-Adam Fox defenseman on the team for the first two months of the season, leading some to anoint him as a must keep on a doomed roster. As they say, that’s why you play the full season, and not just two months.
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