Playoffs about to get real now for Rangers
NY Post
The playoffs are about to begin now in earnest for the Rangers.
Whenever the Game 1 date between the Rangers and Hurricanes in their second-round meeting is announced by the NHL, that’s when the Rangers’ chase for a first Stanley Cup in 30 years gets real.
Yes, the Rangers have played four games since the end of the regular season. But those games came against a limited Washington Capitals team that some would argue didn’t belong in the postseason, having allowed 37 more goals than it scored in the regular season.
You play whoever’s on your schedule, and you make no apologies for it. So, the Rangers owe no one an apology for sweeping the Capitals in the opening round.
But the Capitals were an offensively challenged team with an inexperienced goaltender facing a more explosive and experienced Rangers team that happens to have one of the best netminders in the game and has much more realistic goals about raising the chalice in June.
So, now the cost of doing business rises for the Rangers in this round against a Carolina team that finished just three points behind them in the Eastern Conference’s Metropolitan Division and finished off the Islanders in five games Tuesday night.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Knicks could not fully salvage a two-way clunker Saturday night, and their longest winning streak of the season is history.
If Brian Daboll will be fighting to keep his job across these next seven weeks, it is not lost on Tommy DeVito that he is the one who has been entrusted to help his coach save it.
Kevin Shattenkirk is 35, a Stanley Cup champion and now a father of three with his wife, Deanna, after having a second daughter in September.
SALT LAKE CITY — An encouraging upgrade in his availability status didn’t result in Miles McBride’s return to the Knicks lineup.
This is pretty much the deal.
Uncertainty has followed Zion Williamson off the court.
SALT LAKE CITY — The “Dimes” nickname is open in New York now that quarterback Daniel Jones has been released by the Giants, and perhaps it can be a fitting team-wide moniker in another sport.
General Curtis LeMay: “You’re in a pretty big fix, Mr. President.”
Last spring’s ultimate defeat, coming on top of a quite similar one 24 months earlier, should have proved once and for all that the Rangers’ skill game, impressive at it at may be in spurts, does not overcome their physicality deficiency at the final-four level.
Jon Berti, who started three postseason games at first base for the Yankees when Anthony Rizzo was out with fractured fingers, was non-tendered by the team prior to Friday’s deadline, as was left-hander Tim Mayza.
CALGARY, Alberta — The Rangers needed just 16 seconds to get back into a game they had no business being in over halfway through.