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NEW YORK AT THE CENTER OF THE (SPORTS) UNIVERSE

04-24-2023

All five professional winter season teams in the New York metropolitan area made the playoffs for the first time since 1994.

For four consecutive days, people in sports jerseys of various colors moved in, out and around Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. For some, it was their destination. For others, it was a changing point. But for fans of five teams in two sports in one metropolitan area, it was a hub for that incomparable and captivating springtime buzz: the playoffs.

Across the United States and Canada, many cities are hosting playoff games in professional basketball and hockey. But nowhere was the action more abundant than in the New York metropolitan area, where all five professional winter season teams were in the postseason.

It was the first time the five local teams had been in the playoffs at the same time since 1994, the year Madison Square Garden was the pulsating star at the core of the sports universe. The Rangers and the Knicks traded nights at the Garden from April to June that spring, right through to the finals of the N.H.L. and N.B.A. playoffs, and the Rangers won the Stanley Cup. Along the way, all five teams played dates in that one arena during the playoffs.

This year, by Sunday, three of the teams had played at the Garden, but all five — the Islanders in Nassau County, N.Y.; the Nets in Brooklyn; the Knicks and the Rangers in Manhattan; and the Devils in Newark, N.J. — competed somewhere in the relatively condensed metro area in first-round playoff games.

The crowd and the building were ready for the moment, and Knicks guard Jalen Brunson called the atmosphere “unreal.”

“Being in this environment, there is no other replica,” he said. “There is nothing that comes close to it.”

Rangers fans flocked to New Jersey for the first two playoff games against the Devils.Credit…Bruce Bennett/Getty Images

These playoff runs for the New York area’s teams, which have been germinating for a couple of years, began on Thursday, when the Devils and the Rangers played in Newark for Game 2 of that series. Some fans from New York hopped on a New Jersey Transit train from Penn Station, including many Rangers fans who infiltrated the Prudential Center, home of the Devils. At the same time, barely 14 miles away, the Nets, who once shared an arena with the Devils in East Rutherford, N.J., hosted the Philadelphia 76ers at Barclays Center, and lost Game 3.

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