The 2025 New York Yankees were supposed to be different. A deep roster and dominant first half had them looking like the team to beat in the American League. But as the calendar heads toward mid-August, they've hit a roadblock; five straight losses have dropped them behind the Boston Red Sox into third place in the American League East, and they're fighting to hold onto a wild card spot that once seemed like their floor.
This story should sound familiar to New York Rangers fans — a few months ago, they watched their beloved Blueshirts promising season unravel before their eyes.
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The Rangers started the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs on fire, winning each of the first seven games for just the second time in franchise history. Igor Shesterkin was dialed in, anchoring the team with 45 saves in Game 3 of the second round and stopping 99 shots in a two-game span. Chris Krieder's third-period natural hat trick in Game 6 completed a dramatic comeback win against the Carolina Hurricanes, pushing the Rangers into the Eastern Conference Final.
They grabbed a 2-1 series lead over the Florida Panthers and were on the verge of a commanding 3-1 advantage before dropping Game 4 in overtime. From that point on, the wheels began to fall off. Outside of Shesterkin, Barclay Goodrow, and Alexis Lafreniere, the Rangers went silent. The offense dried up, the defense got sloppy, and what once looked like a Stanley Cup-caliber team fell apart in front of our eyes.
Four months later, the 2024 Yankees completed a 94-win season, then reached their first World Series since 2009 behind the star power of Aaron Judge and Juan Soto . Through the first two rounds of the playoffs, they rolled past the Kansas City Royals and Cleveland Guardians , winning seven of nine games.
But everything started to slip once they reached the Fall Classic against the Los Angeles Dodgers .
The Yankees dropped Game 1 on a Freddie Freeman walk-off home run, and the Dodgers won Game 2 in Los Angeles to take a 2-0 series lead back to the Bronx. Playing in front of their home crowd, the Yankees also lost Game 3. They kept the series alive with a dominant 11-4 win in Game 4, then jumped out to a 5-0 lead in Game 5. But a brutal fifth inning flipped the momentum. The game was tied 5-5 before the Yankees knew what hit them. They never recovered, and as the Dodgers hoisted the championship trophy on the Yankee Stadium infield, New Yorkers got another bitter reminder of just how quickly everything can fall apart.
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The Rangers entered 2024-25 with championship aspirations after coming off a Presidents' Trophy season that included team records for wins (55) and points (114) as well as a trip to the Eastern Conference Final. The roster remained largely intact, Shesterkin and Lafreniere were in contract years, and nearly every major outlet — including Forever Blueshirts — had them pegged as one of the NHL's elite teams. Some staff writers predicted a Stanley Cup, while others saw another Metro Division title and another deep playoff run.
Forever Blueshirts' preseason roundtable demonstrated that belief. Of the nine writers, five picked the Rangers to finish first in the Metro. Two predicted they'd win the Stanley Cup, and nearly every writer named Shesterkin as the team MVP. They expected bounce-back or breakout seasons for players like Mika Zibanejad, Filip Chytil, and Lafreniere.
The Rangers got off to a fast start, going 12-4-1 in their first 17 games, before the roof fell in. They went 4-15-0 in the final 19 games of 2024 and never recovered — becoming just the fourth team in NHL history to miss the playoffs one season after winning the Presidents' Trophy. Nearly every player took a step back from the year before, special teams became a liability, and the team's spark seemed to vanish. Young players like Kaapo Kakko and Filip Chytil were traded, as was team captain Jacob Trouba.
The Rangers stayed on the periphery of the playoff race into the final weeks of the season before falling off completely. What was viewed as a Cup-contending roster in October had unraveled by April. Coach Peter Laviolette was fired, quickly replaced Mike Sullivan. Chris Drury received a contract extension as general manager, and forward Chris Kreider, the longest-tenured Ranger, was traded to the Anaheim Ducks on June 12.
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The Yankees entered 2025 with the goal of finishing the job they had failed to complete the previous fall. But they would have to do it without one of their biggest stars. Soto, who helped lead the Yankees' run to the fall classic, left in free agency to join the crosstown rival New York Mets . The move left a massive hole in the Bronx Bombers' lineup.
In response, the Yankees signed ace lefty Max Fried to deepen the rotation and brought in veterans Cody Bellinger , Paul Goldschmidt , and Jazz Chisholm Jr. to help. Despite some early spring training injuries, the belief in the clubhouse never wavered. "It's a work in progress," GM Brian Cashman said, "but we have a good team." Judge, coming off an MVP 2024 campaign, made it clear the expectations hadn't changed.
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The Rangers got off to the start everyone expected. They opened the season 5-0-1 and had won 12 of their first 17 games after a 4-3 road victory against the Vancouver Canucks on Nov. 17. At that point, they looked every bit like the team had that won the Presidents' Trophy in 2023-24.
But then came the road trip that began to sink them.
In 2023-24, the Rangers swept their October swing through western Canada and Seattle , defeating the Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Vancouver Canucks, Seattle Kraken, and adding a victory against the Jets in Winnipeg for good measure. One year later, the Rangers followed mid-November wins in Seattle and Vancouver with losses in Calgary and Edmonton — two games in which they were badly outplayed.
They returned home and lost 5-2 to the St. Louis Blues, then hit the road again and lost to the Carolina Hurricanes and Philadelphia Flyers, extending their slide to five games. Both special teams struggled, scoring from the top six dried up, and the team that was 12-4-1 in mid-November reached the new year 16-17-1. The Rangers went nearly two months without winning consecutive games (Jan. 9-11) and didn't win three in a row for the rest of the season.
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The Yankees opened 2025 looking like one of the best teams in baseball, By early July, they were comfortably atop the AL East and playing dominant baseball.
But then came Boston. The (then) under-.500 Red Sox exposed the Yankees' first real cracks. Red Sox rookie Carlos Narvaez (and former Yankee) lit them up at Fenway Park as Boston took two out of three. The following weekend in the Bronx, the Sox completed a three-game sweep . What had been a promising stretch quickly spiraled. New York dropped six straight, including three straight losses to the Los Angeles Angels , before narrowly avoiding a sweep with a win in the fourth game.
A brutal road trip followed; the Yankees lost six in a row to the Toronto Blue Jays and Mets, turning a 48-35 record into 48-41 in the span of a week. Although they bounced back with a five-game winning streak, their momentum vanished again after the All-Star break.
The Yankees were aggressive at the trade deadline. They acquired a trio of established pitchers — David Bender from the Pittsburgh Pirates , Camilo Doval from the San Francisco Giants , and Jake Bird from the Colorado Rockies . They also added third baseman Ryan McMahon, infielder Amed Rosario , outfielder Austin Slater , and the speedy Jose Caballero. GM Brain Cashman said, "I know we're better today than we were yesterday," but the results have shown all but that.
But the reinforcements have yet to produce. Bird surrendered a grand slam in his Yankees debut, gave up a walk-off home run days later and was subsequently demoted to the minor leagues . Doval and Bednar haven't found their rhythm, and Devin Williams has blown back-to-back games — allowing a game-tying homer to the Texas Rangers in the ninth inning on Monday, then giving up the only runs in a 2-0 loss in Texas the next night.
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The Rangers' season didn't fall apart overnight. A cold stretch turned into a slump, a slump turned into a collapse, and by the time the front office was playing damage control it was already too late. If the Yankees aren't careful, they could be heading down the same path.
The Yankees entered Wednesday a half-game in front of Texas for the final wild card spot, but all the momentum they built in the first half has disappeared. The bullpen has been shaky, the offense inconstant and the new acquisitions have failed to deliver. The five-game losing streak they're on looks eerily similar to the slide the Blueshirts found themselves in last season. If things don't turn around soon, Aaron Boone might find himself in the same position Laviolette did … out of a job.
The financial picture should also raise alarms. Just like the Rangers, the Yankees are starting to lock themselves into expensive, long-term commitments, Judge, Gerrit Cole , Carlos Rodon , Fried, and Cody Bellinger are all on big-ticket contracts. Not even one full season removed from a World Series appearance, and the team is scrambling for answers.
The Rangers' 2024-25 season was a cautionary tale of high expectations, a hot start … and then a total collapse. The Yankees still have time to avoid the same fate, but only if they can turn things around before it's too late.
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