Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> and Yannick Hanfmann when Monaco previewed ESPN’s upcoming hockey fixtures.<\/p>\nNone of the advertised matches featured the Rangers, a detail that provided an opening for McEnroe, a New York native and lifelong supporter of the club. “Sounds like the Rangers are gonna be in sell mode,” Monaco remarked, alluding to a recent correspondence from Rangers general manager Chris Drury that acknowledged the necessity to “retool the team” during a catastrophic season.<\/p>\n
McEnroe instantly interjected. “I saw that, that’s really depressing,” he said. “What is going on with the Rangers?”<\/p>\n
Rather than returning to the tennis action at Rod Laver Arena, the commentary partnership remained focused on New York’s woes. The Rangers began the week as the sixth-poorest performing team in the NHL and bottom of their division, a remarkable decline for a franchise that secured the Presidents’ Trophy merely two seasons prior.<\/p>\n
“To me, when they traded [former defenseman Jacob] Trouba, I was bummed,” McEnroe continued. “They’re getting rid of all their guys. He was their captain.”<\/p>\n
Monaco pointed out that the Rangers also offloaded long-serving captain Chris Kreider earlier this campaign and recently appointed a new head coach in Mike Sullivan, further evidence of significant organisational change. But McEnroe hadn’t finished.<\/p>\n
“They do a lot of re-cycling, the coaches in the NHL, don’t they?” McEnroe remarked.<\/p>\n
When Monaco responded that the typical NHL coach lasts “three years tops,” McEnroe delivered his verdict. Coaches, he observed, “go somewhere else, fail up.”<\/p>\n
The Rangers’ decline has been dramatic. After topping the league in points during the 2023-24 campaign, New York began this week with a 21-24-6 record, placing the side near the foot of the Metropolitan Division and comfortably outside playoff contention at the season’s halfway stage.<\/p>\n
The franchise hasn’t lifted a Stanley Cup since 1994 and hasn’t appeared in the final since 2014. The side has shipped more goals than it has netted, and is 1-6-1 across its previous eight matches.<\/p>\n
In the tennis, Alcaraz ended up winning the match comfortably 7-6 (7), 6-3, 6-2 to set up a third-round clash with Corentin Moutet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John McEnroe briefly forgot which sport he was covering. During ESPN’s Australian Open coverage on Tuesday, the tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4105],"tags":[4723,6359,21617,13793,77925,13828,79,1068,5838,16,15],"class_list":["post-712379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-australian-open","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-espn","tag-john-mcenroe","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115937087621713240","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}