The New York Rangers traded away Artemi Panarin – one of the best wingers in hockey – for a prospect and two draft picks.
The Kings used him to beat the Rangers 4-1 on Pride Night at Madison Square Garden on Monday.
And a legend fighting Stage 4 cancer just told the organization exactly what they deserved to hear.
A Dying Man Tells the Truth
Ron Duguay is 68 years old and in the fight of his life.
He has lost his appendix and his gallbladder to Stage 4 colon cancer.
He flies from Florida to California every two weeks for treatment.
https://twitter.com/NahBabyNahNah/status/2029238570536325620?s=20
His daughters set up a GoFundMe because cancer, as Duguay put it, "sucks the life out of you" – and it's "so freaking costly."
This is a man with every reason in the world to stay quiet and focus on surviving.
Instead, he watched the Rangers get humiliated Monday night and said what 70% of the crowd was already thinking.
"I didn't want to say it before the game but I saw this coming," Duguay wrote on X after the final horn. "Down 4–1 right after the singing National anthem to (the Pride Flag) to a small group, bad idea bad mojo."
He didn't stop there.
"I don't blame all of the Rangers organization. Its only a select few college brain washed up, woked kids pushing their agenda within the organization."
Then he called his shot on the fans: "I believe, at least 70% of the fans tonight wanted no part of it at all at a Rangers game. Just wanted a family night out. Husband, wife and kids. That's what the Rangers need to celebrate."
"Ranger leadership needs to show some courage and stop this."
The left-wing media immediately went to work.
They called him a homophobe.
They mocked his grammar.
They buried his name in headlines designed to make him look unhinged.
https://twitter.com/RonDuguay10/status/2033335471628018078?s=20
What they will not tell you is that Ron Duguay is not alone.
The NHL Already Tried to Pump the Brakes
This fight has been brewing for years.
In 2023, player after player – Ivan Provorov, James Reimer, Eric and Marc Staal – refused to wear Pride Night jerseys on religious grounds.
The backlash was so widespread that the NHL itself banned Pride Tape and themed warm-up jerseys entirely that offseason.
Then the sports media lost its mind.
The league reversed course within two weeks.
This is the pattern.
A handful of woke staffers inside these organizations push the agenda.
Players and fans push back.
The league folds under media pressure.
And the cycle repeats – except the fans who just wanted to watch hockey keep showing up to find their night turned into a political event they never asked for.
Some teams read the room. The Los Angeles Kings – the team that beat the Rangers Monday night – did not schedule a Pride Night this season.
The team that beat them didn't host one.
The team that lost did.
The Rangers Were Already Radioactive
Here is what you need to understand about this franchise right now.
This is not a team that stumbled into a bad month.
At the Olympic break in February, the Rangers sat at the bottom of the Eastern Conference – 30th in the 32-team league.
They set an NHL record by being shut out in each of their first three home games of the season.
The front office issued what fans called "Letter 2.0" in January – a formal admission that the season was over and the franchise needed to be rebuilt.
Then they traded Panarin to Los Angeles.
On Monday night, Panarin's new team came to Madison Square Garden and handed his old team a 4-1 loss on Pride Night while Delta Airlines handed out Pride pouches to the first 10,000 fans through the door.
That is the choice Rangers leadership made.
Not a response to the on-ice disaster unfolding night after night.
Pride pouches and a rainbow flag on the ice while the franchise burns to the ground.
Into this wreckage walked Ron Duguay – the man who gave six seasons and his best years to this franchise, who broadcast Rangers games for eleven years on MSG Network, who named his grandson "Ranger" – and the organization froze him out before he said a single word.
He was not invited to the annual alumni "Skate with the Greats" event at Ronald McDonald House.
https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/2033929914995663100?s=20
A Rangers legend fighting Stage 4 cancer – blacklisted because he dates Sarah Palin and refuses to keep his mouth shut.
The Real Pattern Nobody in Sports Media Will Say Out Loud
Here is what this is actually about.
When a franchise is losing – really losing, historically losing, record-settingly losing – leadership needs something to point to that isn't their own failures.
Pride Night is useful precisely because it creates a fight.
The moment someone like Ron Duguay speaks up, the story shifts from "Rangers management traded their best player and have the worst record in the NHL" to "Rangers legend says controversial things about Pride Night."
Duguay becomes the villain.
Management becomes the victim.
The woke staffers pushing these events inside these organizations understand exactly what they're doing.
And the fans who flew the flag, bought the jerseys, and packed Madison Square Garden for decades got handed a Delta Airlines Pride pouch and told to be grateful.
Ron Duguay deleted the post after the backlash.
But he retweeted every outlet that covered it.
He is not backing down.
And he is right.
Sources:
- Dylan Gwinn, "Longtime NHL Announcer Blames Rangers' Loss on 'Woke' Pride Night: 'Bad Mojo,'" Breitbart, March 17, 2026.
- Ryan Gaydos, "Ex-NHL star rips Rangers organization for hosting pride night," Fox News, March 17, 2026.
- Staff, "Ron Duguay reveals latest in Stage 4 cancer battle," Daily Mail, March 2026.
- Staff, "Top 5 most disappointing NHL teams at Olympic break, including Rangers," Forever Blueshirts, February 9, 2026.
- Staff, "New York Rangers break NHL record after being shut out three straight times at home," RMNB, October 2025.
- Staff, "NHL's Pride Night Jersey Controversy, Explained," CBS Sports, March 2023.