Reilly Smith will get chance to be Rangers’ long-sought answer on top line
NY Post
As of now, the Rangers’ headlining offseason acquisition is Reilly Smith — a 33-year-old right wing who is coming off a down year in Pittsburgh in his 13th NHL season.
Smith was a third-liner by the time his Penguins tenure was up, but he is now primed to compete for a top-six role with the Blueshirts that has seen an excessive amount of turnover since Pavel Buchnevich was traded in July 2021.
It’s another year and another candidate to skate on the right side of Chris Kreider and Mika Zibanejad.
The two longest tenured Rangers have been on a line together relatively consistently since 2016 and have proven to be a tough duo to join.
Not Patrick Kane nor Vladimir Tarasenko, nor any others on a laundry list of current Rangers who got looks, were able to find steady success in that spot after Buchnevich’s departure.
The last player to look promising there was trade-deadline acquisition Frank Vatrano during the 2022 run to the conference final.
With the Yankees on an impressive run of mostly correct decisions, there’s some reason to leave them alone and just let the best team in the American League continue to roll. But they did raise serious doubt and leave room for suggestions (and even ridicule) following maybe the most inexplicable decision of this season, or any season.
The Giants have never been 0-2 under Brian Daboll, until now. They were 2-0 and flying high in 2022 and 1-1 after a rousing comeback in Arizona in 2023. So, this represents a low point as far as early-season difficulties for Daboll and the Giants. They had no business beating the Vikings in the opener and no business losing to the Commanders in Week 2. But here they are.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Harrison Butker kept making a lonely walk to midfield after each quarter Sunday to check on the direction of the wind, which tends to swirl inside Arrowhead Stadium. He did it one last time during the 2-minute warning, when his Chiefs were trailing the Bengals by two and trying to give him a winning field-goal attempt.