MTPS: The New York Rangers Have Created a Jonny Brodzinski Problem

In a season that has felt like a Tim Burton fever dream, the Rangers took a perfectly good feel-good story and f*&!ed it up. 

Look, everyone loves an underdog story. I’m not talking about the Philadelphia Eagles beating the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl. I’m talking about the true underdog: the undrafted free agent who makes a splash at training camp, the guy who comes out of nowhere to win a spot in the New York Yankees bullpen. Whether it’s Rocky, Rudy, the Jamaican Bobsled Team, or Team USA, they give us chills (Tom Brady would be in this category if he weren't such an unlikeable tool). As a player who toiled in the AHL for years and years before finally getting his shot in the NHL, Jonny Brodzinski is that longshot story.

After being selected 148th overall in the 2013 NHL Draft, Brodzinski played nearly 300 games in the AHL between the 2015-16 and 2022-23 seasons, compared to only 74 NHL games. He spent most of his time living out of suitcases as he was bounced between the Ontario Reign and Los Angeles Kings, San Jose Barracuda and San Jose Sharks, and Hartford Wolf Pack and New York Rangers before finally securing a regular place on the Rangers roster. MSG Network should do a special on him. There should be books written—or at least better online columns than this—to tell his story to all New Yorkers. We should all root for Jonny Brodzinski.

And yet, when I see his name in the lineup I feel a deep, passionate, primal urge to throw my size 14s at the TV or do this. Why is that? Why should you, I, and every other Rangers fan hate Jonny Brodzinski? For that answer my friends let us take a trip, a trip down memory lane.

The year is 1996. The place, Lehigh University. I’m a college freshman attending a party, listening to a house mix of Dr. Dre, Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Blackstreet, and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (the late 90s were a complex time musically). Smeone hands me a gin and tonic, and I not only like it, I LOVE it. As the evening progresses, I have a lot of them. Fun is had by one and all until, at some point, there be a gurgling from down under. I spent the next eternity praying for a swift death while holding on to cool porcelain like it was the only thing keeping me from falling into the abyss. To this day, the mere smell of gin makes me cringe.

Jonny Brodzinski is my New York Rangers version of the gin and tonic. 

There are people who will read this (or other things I’ve posted here and on Slack) and accuse me of hating Jonny Brodzinski, and that’s not true. Here is what I think of Jonny Brodzinski:

• He’s a consistently hard worker on a team that too often has lacked consistency in its work ethic.
• He may run around the ice like a squirrel with ADHD, but he adds an element of speed, plays a north/south game, and is a player who looks to shoot on a team that too often is guilty of making the extra pass.
• The young players who came up through the AHL respect him for being a father figure to a lot of them.
• The perseverance he showed early in his career and the work he put in to get to this point is something that should be an example to all young players and, frankly, also to people in other walks of life.

All of these things are reasons to root for him, and none of these are reasons for the Rangers to keep playing him.