Rangers can prove they’re a different team by closing out Hurricanes
NY Post
The Rangers have been here before, and that is the scary part.
They held a 2-0 series lead against the Devils a year ago before the stars disappeared, Akira Schmid turned into a modern-day Martin Brodeur and the Rangers were left holding the bag.
They held a 2-0 series lead and a 2-0 Game 3 lead against Tampa two years ago before sheer exhaustion caught up with the Rangers, who scored just one goal at even strength for the rest of the series.
These Rangers have spent the year building themselves up to be different.
They built up credit by winning the Presidents’ Trophy in the regular season, sweeping the first seven games of the playoffs and by the sterling practice habits and culture brought in by Peter Laviolette.
Whether or not they really are different will be answered by whether the Rangers can close out the Hurricanes after a disastrous Game 5 on Monday night sent the series back to Raleigh, N.C., with momentum decisively in favor of the team now down 3-2.
It feels right that on the day we celebrate Aaron Judge joining an elite pantheon of athlete — the multi-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award — that we take a walk back to the beginning, when Judge was little more than a 6-foot-7, 280-pound curiosity who mostly specialized in striking out.
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PHOENIX — Wednesday brought some cautiously optimistic updates for the Knicks frontcourt.
The Greatest Escape in franchise history was perpetrated by Glen Sather, when the general manager extricated himself and the Rangers from the final five years of Scott Gomez’s contract by moving the $7,357,143-per-year center to Montreal on June 30, 2009 after two years in New York.
The Yankees publicly are on the same page: Hal Steinbrenner, like Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone before him, said that issues with the club’s fundamentals did not hover over the team all season.
The first day of the rest of Daniel Jones’ dwindling time with the Giants arrived Wednesday, with Jones in the building, in the meetings, on the practice field (although not doing very much) and not at all part of the game plan for the next game, relegated to a non-participant role for the remainder of the season.
There will be a little extra magic for Knicks-Spurs on Christmas Day.
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