{"id":577208,"date":"2026-04-11T03:49:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T03:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/577208\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T03:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T03:49:08","slug":"brian-leetch-in-awe-of-rookie-year-matthew-schaefer-has-carved-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/577208\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Leetch in awe of rookie year Matthew Schaefer has carved out"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Leetch\u2019s experience watching Matthew Schaefer this season has been the same as so many of ours.<\/p>\n<p>He remembers himself at 18.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen he makes plays, I just shake my head, thinking where I was as an 18-year-old,\u201d Leetch told The Post last week. \u201cI needed that whole year of Olympic play and training with the Olympic team to be ready for the NHL. I was definitely not ready at 18.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Rangers great, until Thursday night, was the sole record-holder for goals in a season by a rookie defenseman. Schaefer\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/04\/09\/sports\/islanders-matthew-schaefer-ties-single-season-rookie-defenseman-goal-record\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">23rd of the season tied him<\/a>, and if he scores his 24th over the last three games of the Islanders\u2019 season, No. 48 will further stake his claim to one of the greatest rookie seasons ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brian Leetch\u2019s experience watching Matthew Schaefer this season has been the same as so many of ours. He&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[253548,394,4823,385,99,362,358],"class_list":{"0":"post-577208","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-brian-leetch","9":"tag-new-york-islanders","10":"tag-new-york-rangers","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-sports-columnists","14":"tag-sports-plus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}