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My New Year’s Resolution (for the Fourth Time): Don’t Get Upset with Aaron Boone

Four years ago, I decided it would be better for my overall health if I didn’t get so worked up about Aaron Boone and his daily disasters, not all of which are even related to

Four years ago, I decided it would be better for my overall health if I didn’t get so worked up about Aaron Boone and his daily disasters, not all of which are even related to in-game moments. In six years as Yankees manager, Boone’s time has mostly been spent putting his players in the worst possible position to succeed, and on top of that, he has constantly lied to the media about everything from player availability to player injuries only to be outed as a liar within minutes or hours after his lies. He has made irresponsible bullpen decisions and inexcusable lineup choices during his tenure, and each season when I complain about his managerial ability, I’m told by fellow Yankees fans not to worry because he would never manage the way he does in the regular season in the postseason, and each season, he’s even worse in the postseason (when the Yankees even reach the postseason), like a managerial Nick Swisher.

Last year, I took a year off from these resolutions, knowing they are nearly impossible to accomplish. I decided achieving them was as likely as me pledging to run 30 miles a day. But after the most miserable Yankees season of my lifetime in 2023, I feel I must give them a try again in 2024. I’m quadrupling down on my 2020, 2021 and 2022 New Year’s Resolutions, all of which revolved around Boone. I can’t control the decisions of the Yankees manager, though I can control how I react to them. With Boone being given a seventh chance to manage the Yankees to a championship, I have to try them again. I just have to. For my health and for the health of those who live with me, I owe it to them to try to make these work.

Resolution 1: Don’t Get Upset Over the Lineup
After six full seasons of Boone as manager, we have enough data to know he has no idea how to build the best possible lineup. Thanks to Brian Cashman’s 2020 end-of-the-season press conference we know that Boone has full authority and final say on the lineup card delivered to the home plate umpire. While the front office nerds may have a say on who to bat where and who to play when, we know the unnecessary rest and inexplicable bullpen decisions that have run rampant during Boone’s tenure are all his call.

I need to take a deep breath when I see Giancarlo Stanton batting ahead of Anthony Rizzo or Gleyber Torres in 2024. Boone has been Yankees manager for 901 games (regular season and postseason combined). I shouldn’t expect him to suddenly use logic in determining who bats where.

Resolution 2: Don’t Get Upset About Scheduled Off Days
The Yankees’ scheduled days off and extra and unnecessary rest for their position players is out of control, and unfortunately, it’s not going to change. If anything, it’s only going to get worse. With Aaron Judge turning 32 in April, Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton 34 and DJ LeMahieu 35, get ready for the greatest amount of days off for regulars you have ever seen. Juan Soto is only 25, coming off a season in which he played in all 162 games and the Yankees don’t owe him a cent after this season and I can already see him getting one of the first four games of the season in Houston off, so the Yankees can “get him off his feet” because “it’s a long season.”

The Yankees aren’t going to go out of their way to win the division or home-field advantage in the postseason. They haven’t in a long time. They believe just getting into the postseason is enough (and they have a hard enough time doing that despite 40 percent of the league getting into the playoffs). They don’t care about giving away games as long as they just get in. It’s been working well for them for the last 14 seasons.

Resolution 3: Don’t Get Upset About Bullpen Usage
This will be the hardest of them all. I can deal with the lineup decisions (to a degree) and the scheduled off days (to a lesser degree). The bullpen decisions though? This resolution has less of a chance of happening than Stanton does of a playing a full season without an IL stint.

I don’t think I will ever get over Boone’s decision to use Albert Abreu in literally a “season-on-the-line situation” in Game 161 of 2021. Somehow, Abreu managed to remain rostered by the Yankees for all of 2022 and 2023, and this offseason none of the other 29 MLB teams wanted him, and he was forced to sign in Japan. A pitcher no other major-league team deemed worthy of a contract was part of Boone’s circle of trust multiple times over the last few seasons.

Abreu is just one of a litany of relievers that have nonsensically been given high-leverage work in Boone’s six years. Remember Jonathan Holder? Remember when Boone kept feeding Tommy Kahnle late-game work in 2018 when it was obvious Kahnle needed to work things out in Triple-A, which he eventually did. Remember when the same thing happened to Chad Green early in 2019 and Boone let him ruin a handful of games before Green was finally sent down to figure it out. How about when Clarke Schmidt, a starter by trade, was used in Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS over Clay Holmes (who Boone said was unavailable even though Holmes told the media after the game he was available) or when Boone went to Schmidt as the first reliever in a tie game against the Astros in Game 1 of the 2022 ALCS? These are some of the most high-profile disasters Boone has overseen, but for every one of these, there are 25 examples of him trying to steal outs with the last guy on the roster while his ‘A’ relievers are available and warm.

I understand these resolutions are rather meaningless since I can easily see myself breaking at least one or possibly all three within the first weekend (or on the first day) of the season (considering it’s a four-game series in Houston emotions will be heightened.) I’m really going to try to achieve them, but I know Boone will do his best to make it impossible.

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Yankees Thoughts: Pitching Isn’t a Problem

The Yankees lost out on free-agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Japanese star signed a $325 million deal with the Dodgers and a lot of Yankees fans seem worried. I’m not one of them.

The Yankees lost out on free-agent Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Japanese star signed a $325 million deal with the Dodgers and a lot of Yankees fans seem worried. I’m not one of them.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I thought I would be more upset about the Yankees not landing Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but I’m not. Losing out on Yamamoto (and losing Michael King) hurts their overall pitching staff, but it’s not enough to ruin the 2024 Yankees. The Yankees may not have the pitching depth they had before trading for Juan Soto or the depth they thought they could replenish when Yamamoto was still an option, but pitching hasn’t been a problem for the Yankees in 15 years. The offense, however, is what has led to the demise of the current Yankees core in each of their postseasons and what prevented them from even reaching the postseason last year.

2. The Texas Rangers just won the World Series with a rotation similar to the Yankees’ and an inferior bullpen. They were able to win four postseason rounds and went on the road in the wild-card series to end the Rays’ season, swept the 1-seed Orioles in the ALDS, knocked off the Astros in Games 6 and 7 in Houston and then beat an NL Cinderella story that had eliminated the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies.

3. Does that mean I don’t want the Yankees do anything else? Certainly not. The Yankees still need to build back up their starting pitching depth. It seems as though they are content with their current lineup situation, and because of that, pitching will be their primary focus for the remainder of the offseason. As currently constructed, the Yankees have a strong team on paper and in theory. On paper and in theory, it’s a roster full of household names that should return them to the postseason. In actuality, it’s a roster that is banking on the majority of its players to stay healthy and return to their usual form. I don’t want to go into 2024 with the roster representing the type of parlay card full of +400 and +500 underdogs the Yankees have put together in recent years. Parlays are for suckers and the recent rosters the Yankees have called “championship-caliber” were suckers. The long odds on that parlay card can be shortened by signing one or two of the leftovers starting pitchers with Yamamoto off the board.

4. The Yankees’ inability to sign Yamamoto makes their trade for Soto all that more important. If the Yankees hadn’t acquired Soto and were three days out from Christmas with a replacement-level outfielder the Red Sox didn’t want as their only move, then yeah, things would be bleak for 2024. Soto moved the needle that much for me and the 2024 Yankees. They will still need a lot to happen, but they need a lot less now that they have Soto.

5. Ultimately (credit to Aaron Boone for that word), the Yankees’ season will come down to the following:

Anthony Rizzo being healthy and the offensive force he was in April and May of last season.

DJ LeMahieu being healthy and productive.

Giancarlo Stanton having his first productive season in three years, and if not, the Yankees being willing to move him down in the order, bench him or release him.

Anthony Volpe taking a giant step offensively in his second full season after a rough rookie season at the plate.

Carlos Rodon not being the worst start pitcher in baseball.

Nestor Cortes staying healthy.

If all of those things happen, the Yankees will be fine. (Fine in terms of the regular season.) If half of them happen, they should still be fine in terms of reaching the postseason. If only the Rodon and Cortes needs work out, they will still be fine. If none of them happen, well, Yankees fans will have a lot of free time in August, September and October again like they had last season.

6. The addition of Soto helps mitigate a lot of the offensive issues and uncertainty, but had the Yankees signed Yamamoto they would still be hoping to hit on a few items from that list. Like Soto, adding Yamamoto would have lessened the need for those listed items to go the Yankees’ way, but neither Soto nor Yamamoto alone, nor together, would fully safe-proof the 2024 Yankees from some sort of roster parlay.

7. This offseason has felt longer than normal because the Yankees’ season was hanging on by a thread in mid-July and officially over on August 13. There was essentially seven weeks added to the length of his offseason because of how early the Yankees were out of it. When they open the season on March 28 in Houston, it will be more than seven months since they last played a truly meaningful game.

The Yankees’ lack of depth in all departments leaves little wiggle room for them to sustain injuries and underperformance the way they were able to in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. We saw last year what happens when the current roster is banged up, and next year’s roster currently has less depth than that. If you’re a Yankees fan who’s not already praying for a healthy 2024, you may want to start.

8. I don’t care how much money Yamamoto received and anyone who thinks it’s too much money for a pitcher who has never thrown a pitch in the majors or too much period has been fooled by the owners into thinking there is a limit to how much players can be paid. At least three teams offered Yamamoto $300 million and the team that landed him already invested $700 million in another player. That same team has more than $400 million committed to Mookie Betts and nearly another $200 million to Freddie Freeman and Tyler Glasnow each. Every team can pay and overpay for players. Some just choose to do it more than others.

9. The good news is I don’t see how the Yankees don’t re-sign Soto now with Yamamoto off the table. Hal Steinbrenner could have cried poor after 2024 and let Soto walk if he had just committed to a decade of Yamamoto at $300-plus million. But now? Now the only star position player for the Yankees under contract after 2024 is Aaron Judge. A year ago, Steinbrenner said, “Fans want to see stars,” and then paid a star-less lineup for most of 2023. The Yankees have two stars now and they will hit back-to-back in the order, representing the best back-to-back situation in the sport. I expect them to have both for 2024 and beyond. I have been under the impression the Yankees would re-sign Soto from the second they traded for him, and now I fully expect it. If they don’t, I will be right back to where I was as a Yankees fan the second before the deal for Soto was finalized.

10. Missing out on Yamamoto in this dreadful free-agent class means the Yankees can’t go into 2024 as the true odds-on favorite to win the AL. (Maybe that’s a good thing since they were the odds-on favorite for 2021 and finished third in their division and fifth in the AL and their postseason lasted nine innings.) The AL was wide open for 2023 and the Yankees chose not to be a part of it with their “Run It Back” roster. As open as the AL was last year, it’s similarly open for 2024. Without Yamamoto, the Yankees can’t truly separate themselves from the pack, but there are still free-agent signings they can make to at least have somewhat of an edge on the rest of the league.

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Yankees Thoughts: Juan Soto the Necessity

After years of shopping in the clearance aisle for position players to no success, the Yankees finally acted like the Yankees once again and acquired a generational talent. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

After years of shopping in the clearance aisle for position players to no success, the Yankees finally acted like the Yankees once again and acquired a generational talent.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Last month when Hal Steinbrenner was staring into a laptop rather than publicly assessing the miserable 2023 season in person, nothing he said made me feel better about being a Yankees fan going into 2024. Unless Steinbrenner guaranteed he would stop at nothing to acquire Juan Soto, he wasn’t going to make me feel better about retaining his general manager and manager and his overall evaluation of his inherited franchise.

The Yankees acquired Soto on Wednesday night after days of negotiating, trading player names and finally reviewing the medicals of all of the arms the Yankees exchanged for the 25-year-old superstar. Today, I feel as good about being a Yankee fan as I have since the team won Game 5 of the 2022 ALDS over Cleveland. (That feeling lasted barely 24 hours with the Yankees losing Game 1 of he 2022 ALCS the following night. I expect this feeling to last longer.)

2. I have seen many Yankees fans who say they have been hard on ownership and Brian Cashman in recent seasons take a step back to applaud their work here. There will be no applause from me. This trade doesn’t erase last season. It doesn’t make up for the 2022 trade deadline disaster. It doesn’t negate not signing Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or Corey Seager when it would have only cost money — the Yankees’ greatest resource — to do so. Trading for Soto was necessary and it was the type of move the Yankees should always be willing to make. The trade for Soto is the Yankees as an organization doing their job, something they no longer often do. The Yankees doing their job every few seasons isn’t worthy of congratulatory praise.

3. This deal wasn’t a luxury move, the way it was when the Yankees acquired 28-year-old Alex Rodriguez in February 2004. This move was a necessity. The Yankees desperately needed a middle-of-the-order, superstar, left-handed bat to complement Aaron Judge, and paying whatever price San Diego demanded was going to be worth it. I have seen commentary suggest the Yankees overpaid for Soto or that the Padres somehow “won” a trade that isn’t even a day old. To me, the Yankees didn’t give up anything they couldn’t afford to lose, they acquired the best player in the deal, and it will take the Padres hitting a massive parlay with the arms they received to somehow come out on top from the deal after trading away a unique talent like Soto.

4. During the negotiating period, I came across real people who were worried the Yankees were overpaying for one guaranteed year of Soto by moving Michael King and Drew Thorpe. King was a great late-game, multi-inning reliever for the Yankees and showed exceptional promise as a starting pitcher over the final two months of this past season. He also blew up his arm when he fractured his elbow in July 2022 and the 104 2/3 innings he threw in 2023 represent the most innings he has thrown since 2018. Thorpe had a great season in the minor leagues, but again, it was the minor leagues and his success in High-A and Double-A is in no way indicative of his future success or potential success in the majors. Neither pitchers are good enough to prevent the Yankees from acquiring Soto, and thankfully they weren’t.

5. Soto isn’t a superstar, he’s a generational superstar. He’s a unicorn in terms of plate discipline in today’s game as he has more walks (640) than strikeouts (577) in his career, and only in his rookie season (when he was 19 years old) did he not outwalk his strikeout total (79 to 99). He has the fifth-highest OPS+ for any player with 3,000 plate appearance through his age-24 season with the only players above him being Ty Cobb, Mike Trout, Mickey Mantle and Jimmie Fox.

6. Soto just turned 25 at the end of October and has already played six full seasons in the majors. What he accomplished through his first six years and his age-24 season is ridiculous: posted a .923 OPS as a 19-year-old, led the Nationals to a championship as a 20-year-old with a .949 regular-season OPS and 1.178 World Series OPS; won the batting title (.351 average) as a 21-year-old, recorded the first 145-walk season in 17 years (Barry Bonds) as a 22-year-old; drew another 135 walks and added a Home Run Derby crown as a 23-year-old; played in all 162 games with 132 walks and a .930 OPS as a 24-year-old.

7. To put into perspective just how young Soto is and how absurd it is that he has been in the league for six years already, here is Soto compared to the ages of other Yankees considered “kids” by the organization and fan base:

Estevan Florial: 26.0
Juan Soto: 25.1
Oswaldo Cabrera: 24.9
Austin Wells: 24.5
Anthony Volpe: 22.7

8. Once Jasson Dominguez returns in the summer, the Yankees have the ability to use this lineup:

DJ LeMahieu
Juan Soto
Aaron Judge
Jasson Dominguez
Gleyber Torres
Anthony Rizzo
Giancarlo Stanton
Austin Wells
Anthony Volpe

Here is a real lineup the Yankees used in September:

Estevan Florial
Aaron Judge
Gleyber Torres
Austin Wells
Anthony Volpe
Jake Bauers
Oswald Peraza
Oswaldo Cabrera
Everson Pereira

9. In the past, Soto has said he prefers to hit third. Whether he still feels that way and if it will be Judge then Soto or Soto then Judge in the Yankees lineup is now the team’s biggest offensive problem. For long stretches of last season, Josh Donaldson, Giancarlo Stanton, Willie Calhoun, Harrison Bader and Jake Bauers took turns hitting second and third. The team has come a long way since late last night.

10. I don’t think the Yankees traded for Soto with the idea of taking one shot at ending the championship drought with him on the roster. I think they made this move with the idea they will do whatever it takes to extend him (unlikely with Scott Boras as his agent) or re-sign him. Ideally, the Yankees would pay him before the other 29 teams have a chance to, but if they aren’t able to (and I don’t think they will be able to with the way Boras operates) then at least they have a season together to lay the groundwork needed to keep him a Yankee for the rest of his career.

The Yankees have passed on too many mid-20s position players in recent years (Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Corey Seager) with their decisions to pass immediately coming back to haunt them. The focus for the Yankees with Soto can’t just be for 2024.

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Rangers Thoughts Presented by Vintage Hockey: Awful Effort in Ottawa

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseysapparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!


The Rangers’ latest winning streak came to an end in Ottawa with a 6-2 loss to the worst team in the Eastern Conference.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. It’s difficult to be upset when the Rangers play as poorly as they played on Tuesday in Ottawa. Sitting atop the Met and the East with the league’s best record by points percentage, it’s easy to brush aside games and efforts like the one the Rangers produced against the Senators.

2. Playing the East’s last-place team after a day off, the Rangers fell behind 2-0 in the first period on goals by Brady Tkachuk and Claude Giroux. Artemi Panarin cut the deficit in half 39 seconds into the second period on the power play when he threw a shot into traffic from the point, and the puck found the back of the net like it alway seems to do off Panarin’s stick.

3. Five minutes later, the Senators answered with a goal from old friend Vladimir Tarasenko, who scored to make it 3-1. (Tarasenko added a empty-netter as well because why wouldn’t he? Every ex-Ranger has to score against hte Rangers. That’s the rule.) Twenty-two seconds after Tarasenko made it a two-goal game again, K’Andre Miller scored to trim the Senators’ lead to 3-2. But that’s all the Rangers would get for the rest of the game, as the Senators’ three-goal second was too much to overcome.

“The second period was a track meet,” Peter Laviolette said. “I mean, it went up and down the ice at 100 miles an hour. One way going 100 is fine, but the other way, we have to have better reads and better decisions coming out of offensive zone play.”

4. The Rangers allowed five-plus goals for a second straight game and it was their fourth time allowing four-plus goals in their last six games.

“There’s things we did that didn’t give ourselves the best chance at being successful,” Laviolette said. “I think that they’re easy things to fix.”

Too many odd-man rushes against, too many turnovers and general sloppy play is what I think Laviolette is referring to as the Rangers were outplayed by the East’s worst team.

5. “Obviously, we didn’t like how we played,” Jacob Trouba said. “You’re going to have some games like that.”

Trouba is right, every team is going to have “some games like that,” even the Rangers who have played .750 hockey through the first quarter of the season. That’s why it’s hard to do anything other than “turn the page” like Trouba also said.

The loss was one of 82, just like the other regulation losses this season to Columbus, Nashville, Dallas and Buffalo were. The only issue is when you read through the names of those teams, outside of Dallas, the Rangers clearly have an issue playing down to their opponent’s level.

6. Ottawa is in last in the conference, Columbus is in second-to-last and Buffalo is right behind Columbus. (The Rangers needed a game-tying goal with 11 seconds left in regulation and a shootout win the last time they played Columbus to avoid being 0-2 against the Blue Jackets.) Nashville has played better of later, but the Predators are unlikely to be a postseason team. The Rangers have also lost to the West’s fourth-worst Wild (a game in which the Rangers blew a three-goal lead) and barely eked out a win against the league-worst Sharks last weekend.

7. Now you could argue some of those losses have been negated by wins over Boston, New Jersey, Philadelphia and Detroit. Yes, the Rangers have come out on top against the best teams they have played (aside from Dallas), but it would be easier to stomach some of their losses if they weren’t letdown performances against the worst teams in the league.

That is about as much complaining as one can do about the Rangers right now, and it’s not even really complaining since it’s just the truth: the Rangers have not played well against bad teams.

8. To the Rangers’ credit, they played on Saturday night in Nashville, returned home to play on Sunday night at the Garden, had Monday off and then played in Ottawa the following night. Three games in four days in Tennessee, New York and Canada is not nothing.

9. It was another multi-point game for Panarin, who now has 13 of those in 24 games. Miller scored for the third time in the last four games and fourth time in the last six games, Adam Fox (who you would never know missed 11 games) picked up a point as well. That was about all the good from the game.

10. After having a back-to-back last weekend (Nashville and San Jose), the Rangers will have another this weekend in Washington D.C. and home against Los Angeles. They will play back-to-backs every weekend in December. The quick trip to play the Capitals will be followed by three straight home games and six of the next eight at the Garden. 

The Rangers had recorded at least one point in 17 of their last 19 games before the loss in Ottawa. They will look to add to their East-leading point total and avoid losing back-to-back games for the first time this season on Saturday against the Capitals.


Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseysapparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

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Rangers Thoughts Presented by Vintage Ice Hockey: Artemi Panarin Puts Sharks in Place

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseys, apparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check

Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseysapparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!


After a mid-week win over Detroit and a Saturday night win in Nashville, a Sunday night home game against league-worst San Jose was set up to be a trap game for the Rangers.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Rangers.

1. I was worried about the Rangers and their league-best record hosting the Sharks and their league-worst record. Having played the previous night in Nashville and playing for the third time in five days, I had visions of David Quinn walking out of Madison Square Garden holding his head up high with a smile on his face after knocking off his former employers. Thankfully, Artemi Panarin put my fears to rest, handed the Quinn’s Sharks another loss and pushed him a little closer to the door in San Jose.

2. Panarin produced his league-leading 12th multi-point game of the season (in just 23 games), scored his fifth career hat trick, added an assist and the Rangers won 6-5.

“He leaves you speechless sometimes,” Mika Zibanejad said of Panarin. “I couldn’t be happier having him on our team.”

Panarin is up to 35 points in 23 games and a 125-point pace over 82 games. He has never scored more than 32 goals in a season and he’s one away from being halfway to that total with more than 70 percent of the season to play.

“He’s been outstanding,” Vincent Trocheck said of Panarin. “He’s taken another step, somehow, and he was already a world-class player.”

3. In what was a wild game, the Rangers overcame two deficits, blew a one-goal lead and nearly blew a two-goal lead.

“It was loose defensively, but we can’t make excuses about that,” Trocheck said. “We have back-to-backs all the time in this league. Whether it’s a great team or a team that’s maybe not in a playoff spot, you still have to come out the same way.”

4. The Rangers’ first deficit came 3:50 into the game when Anthony Duclair undressed Jonathan Quick with a breakaway deke to give the Sharks a 1-0 lead. The former Ranger who was traded away as a 19-year-old rookie is now a 28-year-old vet, having played for seven teams within the last decade. There’s a chance he could return to the Rangers later this season as he has been a popular name tied to the team as a potential trade deadline target, and I’m all for bringing him back to where he started. 

5. Five minutes after Duclair opened the scoring, the Rangers tied it on the power play with Panarin’s first on the night — a wrist shot from the point through traffic. The Sharks regained the lead less than four minutes later, and then just 34 seconds after the Sharks scored, Panarin tied it at 2. Zibanejad scored his sixth of the season at 16:42 of the first period in what was the final goal of a five-goal first.

The Sharks got a power-play goal at 9:16 of the second to tie it at 3, and later in the period, Will Cuylle broke the tie with his first goal in 10 games (and his first point in nine).

“He’s a young player who gives everything he’s got every night,” Peter Laviolette said of Cuylle. “He’s learning, but he’s off to a good start.”

6. Jonny Brodzinski got a chance to play with Zibanejad and Chris Kreider in his latest and best attempt to stick in the NHL, and he didn’t disappoint with his second straight two-assist game. The four-point weekend and the chemistry with Zibanejad and Kreider will certainly give Brodzinski an extended look in the Rangers’ top-six.

“He had a really good training camp,” Laviolette said of Brodzinski. “He was generating lots of scoring chances, attempts, pucks at the net and doing lots of good things.”

7. The Rangers extended their lead in the third, making it 5-3 on Panarin’s third of the game, and then 6-3 on K’Andre Miller’s fourth of the season. With a three-goal lead, the remaining 6:56 seemed like a formality, especially with the Sharks as the opponent, but a couple of turnovers at the top of the offensive zone led to Sharks’ goals at 14:38 and 15:50 to cut the Rangers’ lead to 6-5. Fortunately, there was nothing more after that.

“They made it interesting in the end,” Zibanejad said. “We’ll take this win and these four points this weekend.”

8. “Give our guys a ton of credit,” Quinn said. “They came ready to play tonight and had a chance to tie it late.”

Yes, the Sharks came ready to play, allowing six goals and losing on the road for the 11th time in 12 rod games his season.

The win improved the Rangers to a ridiculous 18-4-1 on the season and 9-0-1 in their last 10 games against the Sharks. 

“It’s a good feeling,” Panarin said. “We look pretty good right now. I hope we can play this way all year.”

9. For as good as the Rangers have been this season, and they have been unbelievable, it’s hard not to think ahead to their eventual postseason berth and what type of team they will be come April. At this point, the Rangers playing in April is a given. They have a 97 percent chance to make the playoffs as of now, which represents the highest odds in the Eastern Conference. With 37 points through 23 games, playing .500 hockey for the rest of he season would give them more than enough to reach the playoffs. For now, I will try to stay in the moment and enjoy this magical run.

10. Next up is a game in Ottawa on Tuesday, and then another weekend back-to-back in Washington and home against Los Angeles. Nine games over the next 19 days before Christmas break with five of them at home and all nine in the Eastern Time Zone. After a grueling, ugly schedule over the first two months of the season, the schedule finally favors the Rangers, and so far thy have made the most of playing at home and on the East Coast. I don’t expect them to stop now.


Vintage Ice Hockey is the only company that sells premium-quality jerseysapparel and team merchandise for defunct minor league hockey franchises. It’s a family-run, hockey fan-driven company that’s committed to celebrating and preserving the legacies of defunct minor league hockey franchises. Check out their collection spanning over 100 years of minor league hockey and use code KTTC for 15% off your order!

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