The party’s over

As the Willie Nelson song goes, "Turn out the lights, the party's over." When I wrote my last blog, it was late April, the regular seasons for the Knicks and Rangers were complete, and it was playoff time!

The party’s over

Following a rousing six-game series win over the 76ers, the Knicks, running on fumes with an injury-depleted roster, fell to the Indiana Pacers in seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals. By the way, when Charles Barkley said that ultimately it wouldn't matter who won the series, since the Celtics would demolish either team, he was on the money - the Celtics wound up sweeping the Pacers out of the EC finals, and will take on the Mavs for the NBA championship.

As Jason mentioned in the previous blog, there is something to look forward to for the 2024-25 season. If this team can stay healthy - and that's a big if - it's likely that the Knicks could make another pretty deep playoff run next year. All in all though, the Knicks were not generally considered to be title contenders this season, although they made great strides toward getting there. To see them run out of gas in the second round was disappointing, for sure, but Knicks fans have to feel pretty good knowing that a championship contention window is now open, and figures to be for a few seasons.

The Rangers, meanwhile, were indeed championship contenders, and played that way during the regular season and into the early rounds of the playoffs, piling up franchise records in regular season wins and points, sweeping through the Capitals and knocking off the Hurricanes in six games. All the talent they had, on offense, on defense, and in goal, had carried them within six wins of the team's first Stanley Cup title in 30 years, and they couldn't get it done, falling to the Florida Panthers in six games in the Eastern Conference finals. What a bitterly disappointing way to end the season.

Key forwards such as Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad and Chris Kreider were non-factors in the series, and the defense wasn't able to generate much of anything in the postseason - it's just that the often spectacular play of goalie Igor Shesterkin helped paper over a lot of the team's shortcomings, until the opposing talent just got too much to bear.

Two trips to the EC finals in three years is not terrible, but the Rangers absolutely cannot afford to waste Shesterkin's prime like they did with Henrik Lundqvist. It was a terrific debut season for head coach Peter Laviolette, but 2021-2022 was also a solid debut season for head coach Gerard Gallant, and he was gone after the Rangers were bounced out of the first round last year. A similar fate may await Laviolette if he fails to get this team any further.

Any time your favorite team advances in the playoffs, you absolutely cannot take it for granted. You never know when they'll be back. It's been 10 years now since the Rangers appeared in the Stanley Cup finals. Heck, it's been 25 years since the Knicks made it to the NBA Finals, and when 2025 rolls around it'll be 52 years since their last championship. Last year I blogged about how the New York and Buffalo franchises in the four major North American sports are going through the longest collective title drought in history, and it grows a few months longer, now that MSG has turned its lights off.

So now we set our hopeful drought-breaking sights on…the Yankees? Ew, gross.

I guess it's wait til next year. Again.