Knicks Finally Rounding Into Shape

Wednesday, November 13, represented a low point for the New York Knicks. They had just dropped a 124-123 decision to the lowly Chicago Bulls. Their record stood at 5-6, hardly the start they were hoping for. The doubters and the "I told you so" contingent were having a field day.

With last night's 108-85 win over the Orlando Magic, the Knicks are now 16-4 over their last twenty games. At 21-10, they are 3rd in the Eastern Conference, only two games behind the reigning NBA champ Boston Celtics.

The turnaround has been nothing short of astonishing. The starting five that looked so good on paper but struggled early, has come into its own over the last few weeks. Mikal Bridges, the player Leon Rose gave up five first round draft picks for, went from averaging 14.7 points per game in November to 22.3 points per game in December. His 41 points on Christmas Day, helped the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 117-114. Karl-Anthony Towns leads the NBA in rebounding with 13.7 boards per game and is second on the team in scoring with 24.3 points per game. O.G. Anunoby, in his first full season in New York, is 5th in the league in plus / minus with a plus 256 and is contributing 16.5 points per game. The balanced attack means that Jalen Brunson no longer has to carry this team on his back like he did last season.

Defensively, the Knicks have gone from being one of the worst teams in the league to one of the best. They currently rank 7th in the NBA, allowing an average of 109.3 points per game. But in the month of December, they have allowed an average of 103.6 points per game, while scoring an average of 115.8 points per game. That's a 12.2 point differential. To put that in perspective, the Celtics had a 11.4 point differential last season on their way to a league-best 64-18 record.

Not everything has been a bed of roses for the men in orange and blue. The Knicks have had issues with slow starts all season long. In a game at Charlotte on November 29, they trailed the Hornets 23-15 after the first quarter before finally eking out a 99-98 win. Against the Detroit Pistons at the Garden on December 7, they trailed 39-23 after the first quarter; this time, however, they would not be able to overcome their deficit. 

Despite his dominance on the boards, Towns has had a propensity for getting into foul trouble of late. Over his last four games, he has picked up five personal fouls three times and fouled out once. Until Mitchell Robinson returns from the injured list - hopefully sometime in January - KAT must show more discipline. 

And the free throw shooting has been a recent cause for concern. Last night against the Magic, they shot only 70.6 percent from the line; the other night against the Toronto Raptors, they shot only 69 percent from the line. Fortunately for the Knicks, neither game was close. Against a tougher opponent, though, it could've cost them a win.

But that aside, the Knicks are finally becoming the team everyone thought they'd be before the season began. Offensively, they are spreading the ball around, making it difficult for opponents to double team any one particular player. One night it might be Brunson who's the hero; the next it might be Towns, or Bridges, or OG, or Hart. Without question, this is the most talented roster the Knicks have had since the glory days of Red Holzman in the 1970s. And once everyone is healthy, defensively, it'll be the toughest to play against since the days of Pat Riley in the 1990s. In his wildest dreams Tom Thibodeau could never have imagined coaching a group of players like this.

Go ahead, scoff if you want, but I'm more optimistic now than I was in October when I picked them to win 55 games. As of now, there are only three teams in the NBA that could beat the Knicks in a best of seven series, and one of them - the Oklahoma City Thunder - is in the Western Conference. The other two are the Cleveland Cavaliers - who nobody saw coming - and the Celtics. If Rose can somehow manage to tweak this roster a bit further, who knows, they might be the team to beat come April.

It took 54 years for the Rangers to finally end their championship drought; so far, the Knicks drought is closing in on 52 years. Whether it comes to an end this June remains to be seen.

Rangers Finally Call It a Night on Kakko

To fully appreciate what happened with Kaapo Kakko, we need to go all the way back to that letter then GM Jeff Gorton sent out to the fanbase on February 8, 2018, informing them that the New York Rangers were going to be sellers - not buyers - at the trade deadline. 

It was an extraordinary acknowledgment, one seldom seen in professional sports. Typically franchises don't go public with their plans regarding rebuilding; they just go ahead with it. But this was different. The Rangers, after going to the finals in 2014 and winning the Presidents' Trophy the following season, were clearly on a downward trajectory. To continue investing in this core would've been fruitless. Credit Gorton for being able to read the tealeaves.

There was just one tiny problem. The Rangers didn't actually do a formal rebuild in the traditional sense of the word; that is they didn't tear it down to the studs. Ryan McDonagh, J.T. Miller, Rick Nash, Michael Grabner and (later) Mats Zuccarello and Kevin Hayes were all sent packing. But Gorton elected to keep Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, Pavel Buchnevich, Marc Steal and Henrik Lundqvist. In other words, what the Rangers did was more a retool than a rebuild. 

Lady luck then shined on the franchise. The Rangers wound up with the second overall pick in the 2019 NHL Draft, which they used to select Kakko, a player generally viewed by many scouts as a future star in the league. Fans already had him pegged as the next Jaromir Jagr. 

Of course on any other rebuilding team, Kakko would've gotten a top six forward spot, including time on the power play. Unfortunately for him, Gorton had other plans. Over the summer, he signed Artemi Panarin and traded for Jacob Trouba. He also acquired a little known defenseman from Jericho, New York by the name of Adam Fox. The formal announcement in May of that year that the Rangers had hired John Davidson to be their President ostensibly meant that the rebuild was, if not officially over, at least unofficially put on hold. Two seasons in the tank was enough for owner James Dolan. It was time to start winning again. 

For most of the 2019-20 season, the Blueshirts were fun to watch. Panarin led the team in overall scoring while Zibanejad led them in goals. They flirted with the playoffs. Then Covid-19 hit and the NHL, like everything else, shut down. When play resumed over the summer, the Rangers somehow managed to qualify for the play-in round, where they were swept by the Carolina Hurricanes. Their reward for failing to advance to the playoffs was to wind up with the number one overall pick in the 2020 draft, which they used to select Alexis Lafreniere. 

Lafreniere, like Kakko before him, should've gotten a top six forward spot. Instead, he was buried, for the most part, in the bottom six. And he rarely, if ever, got time on the power play. Think about it: the Rangers, in consecutive years, landed two elite prospects in the draft only to treat them as if they were checking forwards. 

And it wasn't just Kakko and Lafreniere who were consigned to the back of the bus. 2017 first-round pick Filip Chytil was also having a hard time getting ice time. This reluctance by the organization to give their young players the attention they badly needed meant that their growth was stunted from the beginning. Between the three, though, Kakko was the one most snake bitten. The closest he came to realizing his potential was in 2022-23. He scored 18 goals and added 22 assists that season. 

But before you get the impression that this was all the fault of the Rangers, it should be noted that both Chytil and Lafreniere eventually had breakout years: the former scoring 22 goals as the third-line canter in 2022-23; the latter 28 goals last season playing on the second line with Panarin and Vincent Trocheck.

The bottom line was that even with Peter Laviolette as his coach, Kakko was never able to come into his own. It was not for lack of effort; God knows the kid tried. He was one of the hardest working forwards on the team. He just couldn't finish around the net. And when you're the second overall pick in the draft you're expected to produce.

So yesterday, Chris Drury finally pulled the plug and traded him to the Seattle Kraken for defenseman Will Borgen and two middle-round draft picks in 2025. To say it was a disappointing return would be an understatement. Borgen will likely replace Victor Mancini - who was sent down to Hartford - on the third pairing with Zac Jones.

Already the Monday-morning quarterbacks are at it. The prevailing sentiment is that Drury could've had Jake Guentzel last season in return for Kakko, a first rounder and a couple of prospects. First off, we don't know if that was true; second, even if that was true, it's likely those prospects would've consisted of Will Cuylle and Gabe Perrault. The former has been arguably the team's second best forward this season; the latter is one of the most talented players in college hockey today. Drury would've been a fool to give up that much for what amounted to a rental. Besides, what did Guentzel do for the Hurricanes last season? Oh yeah, they lost to the Rangers in the second round, and Guentzel is now a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Hindsight is always 20 / 20, especially in sports. The Twitterverse is replete with shoulda, coulda, woulda trades that always seem to work out for the prognosticators. In the end, though, I can't blame Drury for wanting to hold onto Kakko as long as possible. It's obvious the skill is still there. Hopefully he will develop into the player everyone thought he'd be when he was drafted five years ago.

As for Drury, he met with the players this afternoon in Dallas to clear the air over the way the Goodrow and Trouba moves were handled. It couldn't have come at a better time, because according to Vince Mercogliano, the core is not exactly thrilled with their GM. But here's the thing: the longer this team continues its slide - 11 losses in the last 14 games - the more likely it is that the trades will continue. It's a vicious cycle that only they can stop. As long as Drury has the backing of Dolan, he isn't going anywhere. And there doesn't appear to be any appetite within the organization to make a change behind the bench. 

So for the time being, both the players and management are stuck with one another. And as is usual with situations like this, the onus is on the former to change the narrative.

Rangers In A Free Fall

I have watched the New York Rangers since 1971. Trust me. I have gone through my fair share of downturns. 1976-78, 1987-89, 1998-04 & 2018-21. The 1998-04 period was particularly rough. No playoffs and some of the worst trades in franchise history. But in all that time I have never seen what happened Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden. The team I have followed since I was 10 years old did the equivalent of a lay down in front of 18,000 loyal paying fans. It was a pathetic performance from a group of players that last season won the Presidents' Trophy. 

I have tried as hard as I can to wrap my head around what is going on here and quite frankly I'm stumped. Not only is this team not playing well, it doesn't appear to be even trying. Against the LA Kings, they looked listless and uninspiring; as if they didn't give a shit. Small wonder they were booed off the ice after the game.

The Rangers have lost 9 of their last 12 games. At 15-13-1, they are currently in 5th place in the Metropolitan Division. Not only would they fail to make the playoffs if the season ended today, with 31 points, they are actually closer to the bottom of the standings in the Eastern Conference than they are to the top. Thank God for the Montreal Canadiens and the Columbus Blue Jackets.

I've heard all kinds of explanations for the dumpster fire currently residing at Penn Plaza. It's Chris Drury's fault for mishandling the Barclay Goodrow waiver and the Jacob Trouba trade; it's Peter Laviolette's fault for not being tough enough with his players. I call bullshit on both. 

True, Drury could've done a better job with both situations, but what was he supposed to do? The Rangers needed cap space badly and, let's face it, Goodrow and Trouba were the logical choices to be moved over the summer. The same people who are now bemoaning the way Goodrow and Trouba were treated couldn't wait to send them packing a few months ago. It was nothing short of a miracle that Drury got every penny of their cap hit off the books without surrendering anything of value in exchange. But by all means let's make him the bad guy.

Did you see what happened down in Tampa Bay? Julien BriseBois did everything except drive Steven Stamkoss to the airport; then turned around and signed Jake Guentzel to replace him. Stamkoss had played his entire NHL career with the Lightning and BriseBois showed him all the love and respect of a worn out lightbulb. Last time I checked the Bolts were in 4th place in the Atlantic Division, currently holding onto the number one wild card spot.

Spoiler alert: players get waived and traded all the time in professional sports. It's part of the business. Yes, Trouba was the captain. Guess what? Captains get traded too. Ask Brian Leetch what being a captain means. He was traded to the Boston Bruins literally on his birthday, two weeks after he asked Glen Sather not to be. General managers aren't paid to be guidance counselors or therapists; they're paid to put a competitive team on the ice. And in a league that has a hard salary cap, sometimes they have to make tough decisions about who stays and who goes.

Regarding Laviolette, yes, I'd like him to be tougher on his players. But last season this head coach, who, it should be noted, guided three different teams to the Stanley Cup finals and one to a Cup championship, was principally responsible for this team not only winning the Presidents' Trophy but setting a franchise record for most wins and points in a single season. Had they not faced the Florida Panthers, they would've made it to the finals. All of a sudden he's fucking Jean-Guy Talbot? Please spare me. 

David Quinn was too tough; Gerard Gallant wasn't tough enough. What's the excuse with Laviolette? He parts his hair on the wrong side? I agree with Larry Brooks: this core doesn't get to fire another coach. Besides, the way this team is playing, Scotty Bowman wouldn't make a difference. If you're looking for someone to put the blame on, how about the players? Last time I checked, they're the ones wearing the uniforms. Is it Laviolette's fault that Mika Zibanaejad can't hit a wide open net? Or that Ryan Lindgren can't back check worth a damn? Or that Chris Kreider has become a statue on the ice? Or that the only goal Adam Fox has scored all season was an empty netter? How is it that on a team with this much talent, its best player is Will Cuylle?

Enough with the excuses; enough with the rationalizations. It's time this group of players took a long, hard look in the mirror and manned up. It is inconceivable that a team that went to the conference finals twice in the last three years could've fallen off the cliff this quickly. So the answer must lie elsewhere. 

What isn't the answer is firing the coach and/or GM. The truth is there's more than enough talent on this team to still make the postseason. Whether there's enough pride is another matter. 

Cohen Bags Soto

That vibration you felt last night was George Steinbrenner not only turning over in his grave but punching the sides of the casket with both fists. In what can only be described as the greatest coup in the 63 year history of the franchise, the New York Mets not only landed the biggest prize in free agency, they literally stole him from their cross-town rival Yankees.

Juan Soto is a Met. The 26 year-old right fielder signed for an unprecedented $765 million over 15 years. The contract includes a $75 million signing bonus and an opt out after five years should Soto decide to leave Flushing. To put this in perspective, Tom Brady and LeBron James combined earned $761 million over their collective careers which spanned 45 years.

But the most amazing thing - no pun intended - about this was that the Mets offer was only $5 million more than the Yankees. The Yankees offered $760 million over 16 years; the Mets offered $765 million over 15 years. Late Sunday, it was widely believed that if the two teams were close, Soto would remain in the Bronx. Yours truly tweeted that for the Mets to land Soto they would have to be $30-$50 million above the Yankees offer.

So much for the mystique of playing for the Yankees. 

Yankees fans can cry in their beer and accuse Soto of being a mercenary all they want - and let's be honest, if not for Cohen's immense financial resources, this is just a pipe dream for the Mets - the fact is Soto is a clutch player who in seven seasons in the big leagues has hit 201 home runs and boasts a career .953 OPS. In the 2019 postseason, he hit .277 with 5 home runs and 14 runs batted in with an OPS of .927 for the Washington Nationals. Last postseason, he hit .327 with 4 HRs and 9 RBIs with an OPS of .1101 for the Yankees. The man is a winner, and if Brian Cashman had done a better job at the trade deadline last season, the Bronx Bombers might well have won their 28th World Series title instead of losing to the LA Dodgers in five. 

Face it, the Mets have a more balanced team with enough hitters to protect Soto in the lineup, especially if they re-sign Pete Alonso, which now seems likely given the season the Polar Bear had last year and the fact that he's gotten zero interest for his services from other teams. In fact, it would not surprise me at all to learn that Cohen reassured Soto that Alonso or someone comparable would be playing first base for the Mets in 2025.

If you're a Mets fan you have every right to crow today. Moments like this do not come along very often. The last time the Flushing Faithful were this giddy about a new player was 2005 when then GM Omar Minaya signed Carlos Beltran to a 7 year, $119 million contract. Though Beltran struggled his first year as a Met, he had three consecutive 100 plus RBI seasons after that.

But as wonderful as this moment may seem, there is still more work ahead for Cohen and David Stearns. With or without Alonso returning to the fold, the Mets will need to replace Luis Severino, who signed a three-year, $67 million deal with the Oakland A's. The right-hander had his best season since 2018, going 11-7 with a 3.91 ERA. Frankie Montas is a good addition, but hardly what you would call an ace. Clay Holmes led the Yankees in saves with 30 and would make a far better set-up man for Edwin Diaz than a starter, which is what the Mets envision him as. Like Severino, Sean Manaea opted out of his contract to become a free agent. Re-signing him should be a priority for Stearns. And let's not forget, Kodai Senga will be coming back from an injury that sidelined him most of last season. There is virtually no pathway to a World Series appearance for the Mets without a quality starting rotation. 

Re-signing Jesse Winker would give Carlos Mendoza another hitter who can platoon with Starling Marte in the DH spot. Jose Iglesias provided a spark last season and can play both 2nd and 3rd base. Hopefully he can be brought back at a reasonable price. And if Stearns can find a suitable suitor for Jeff McNeil, that would free up second base for Luisangel Acuña. The young phenom batted .308 and hit 3 homers in just 12 games last season.

Bottom line: After years of playing second fiddle and living in the shadow of the House That Ruth Built, the Mets, thanks to Steve Cohen, have staked their claim to the city. For the time being, the back pages of the daily newspapers are theirs. They have the mojo. What they do with it next is entirely up to them.

April can't come fast enough.

Drury Has the Last Word with Trouba

What do Patrik Nemeth, Barclay Goodrow and Jacob Trouba have in common? All three were signed to contracts that turned out to be richer than the Rangers could afford, and all three were moved off the roster by Chris Drury without incurring so much as a nickel's worth of salary retention. 

Nemeth was sent packing to the Arizona Coyotes, along with a couple of draft picks, for Ty Emberson in the summer of 2022; Goodrow was waived and later claimed by the San Jose Sharks this past summer; and, yesterday, Trouba was "traded" to the Anaheim Ducks for Urho Vaakanainen and a conditional draft pick. I put the word traded in quotation marks because it was widely reported, and later confirmed by Trouba himself, that had he not accepted the trade, Drury was prepared to waive him just like he did with Goodrow over the summer.

Know this about Drury: whether you think he's been a good general manager or not, when he realizes a mistake has been made, he's not one to stand on ceremony. It takes a certain amount of talent to completely erase a mistake; one his predecessor Jeff Gorton, unfortunately, did not possess. 

Of all the mistakes this organization has made over the last few years, Trouba was, by far, the worst. Since his arrival from the Winnipeg Jets in 2021, he was, at best, an above average defenseman with a penchant for throwing bone-jarring checks that often knocked opponents out of the game; at worst, he was a defensive liability, whose mistakes proved costly to his team. The most egregious of those mistakes came against the Florida Panthers in game six of last year's Eastern Conference Finals. Trouba attempted to throw one of his patented checks on Evan Rodrigues late in the first period, and when he missed, Rodrigues set up Sam Bennett for a goal to give the Panthers a lead they would never relinquish. Game, set and match for the Blueshirts.

Bottom line: at $4 million, Trouba was overpriced; at $8 million, he was an albatross around the neck of the cap-strapped Rangers. And with several players due to hit free agency next year, Drury needed to clear cap space fast.

He tried trading Trouba. The Detroit Red Wings expressed interest in acquiring him last summer, but before Drury could pull the trigger, he needed to know whether Detroit was on Trouba's 15 team no trade list. So he asked Trouba's agent and, well, you know the rest. Captain Elbow threw a hissy fit and that was that.

As it turns out, Steve Yzermann couldn't take on Trouba's contract because he wasn't able to clear enough cap space on his own to make it work, which was just as well because the deal the two men had in place called for the Rangers to retain $2.5 million of Trouba's salary. Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make. Five months later, Drury was able to unload Trouba's entire contract and he actually got something in return besides $8 million of cap space.

So now that Trouba's is gone, the sixty-four thousand dollar question remaining is whether Drury is done? That depends on what happens over the next few games. Let's not kid ourselves here. While last night's win was sorely needed, it was hardly reassuring. The Rangers barely beat a Pittsburgh Penguins team that has even more question marks than the Blueshirts; two games ago, the Rangers needed a late power play goal by Kaapo Kakko to avoid what could've been an embarrassing OT defeat to the Montreal Canadiens. The fact is of New York's 14 wins, only two have come against teams that were in the playoffs last season: the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Vancouver Canucks. The rest? Well let's just say if the Rangers could play the Penguins, Islanders, Canadiens and Red Wings the rest of the season, they'd win back-to-back Presidents' trophies.

So if I had to guess, I'd say Drury isn't done tinkering with this roster. I could see at least two more trades on the horizon. One involving the forwards; the other the defensive pairings. Thanks to the largess of Pat Verbeek, the Rangers are flush with cap space. With the salary cap expected to go up to $92.5 million for the 2025-26 season, Drury will have about $22 million to play with next summer. And assuming he doesn't bring anybody else up from Hartford, he'll have $24 million in deadline cap space to go shopping with this March.

One thing off Drury's plate is who the starting goaltender will be next season. About an hour before last night's game it was announced that the Rangers and Igor Shesterkin had agreed on an 8 year, $92 million contract extension. On any other team a goalie with an $11.5m AAV salary could be considered insane; on the Rangers it's an absolute necessity. Let's be honest: without Igor, no way this team would've advanced to the conference finals two of the last three seasons. You know it and I know it. There was never any doubt Drury was going to re-sign him; the only question was for how much. Frankly, given the numbers we were hearing coming from Shesterkin's camp, $11.5 million seems more than reasonable.

So, Drury rid himself of an overrated, overpriced defenseman and locked up arguably his best player for the next eight years. Hate him if you want, but he had himself quite a day.