Rangers and Sharks heading in opposite directions — and could be fitting trade partners
NY Post
LOS ANGELES — On Friday, the Rangers will face a Sharks team that is finally making a racket after years of purgatory.
The matchup feels like a sudden inversion. At the end of just last season, the Sharks were in the exact same position the Blueshirts are in now: dead last in their conference. While the Rangers have been on a downward trajectory, San Jose is beginning to reap the benefits of their rebuilding process.
The Rangers, on the other hand, just entered a retooling phase.
A young and promising Sharks core coming into its own has prompted an organizational shift.
At some point, the Rangers could very well do some business with their upcoming opponents.
“They’re a team that hasn’t had a lot of expectations, so there’s not a lot of pressure,” head coach Mike Sullivan said of the Sharks after practice Thursday afternoon in El Segundo, Calif. “They’re an emerging group. I think they have a young Sidney Crosby in [Macklin] Celebrini. That’s who he reminds me of, with the way he plays the game and his passion to play the game a certain way.
PORT ST. LUCIE — The Mets’ 2025 failing (one of them anyway) might be their big strength now.
The discourse has gone on for two seasons now. But it doesn’t exactly match reality.
Where were the grownups for Team USA?
The Rangers reconvened after the Olympic stoppage wanting to find some successful combinations that had been largely absent through much of a disappointing last-place season.
SALT LAKE CITY — There was no sugarcoating an ugly first-half performance from the Knicks in the locker room, and the harsh words during the break helped spur a comeback in Wednesday’s 134-117 victory over the Jazz.
Team USA’s fate is out of its hands.
CLEARWATER, Fla. — Jasson Domínguez’s first-inning at-bat against Tanner Banks on Tuesday featured a different result and a different swing than “The Martian” had been accustomed to against lefty pitching.
Maxx Crosby isn’t looking in the rearview after a wild 24 hours.
Bam Adebayo occupies a new spot in the NBA history books.
Jets fans have been waiting for months to put the 2025 season in the past and start building a new roster.
SALT LAKE CITY — Leon Rose tried to address the bench in the summer. It didn’t work. He got a redo at the trade deadline with Jose Alvarado and Jeremy Sochan.
If Isaiah Likely was the most … er … likely former Raven to follow head coach John Harbaugh to the Giants, Patrick Ricard wasn’t far behind.
The deal that brought Aidan Thompson to the Rangers didn’t create the ripple effects that the Artemi Panarin trade did because of who departed the organization. That was only Derrick Pouliot, a 32-year-old defenseman more than two years removed from his last NHL game. It didn’t create the waves like one for, say, Vincent Trocheck, would have because of current NHL players or draft capital the Blueshirts received in return, either.