Photograph of Islanders celebrating a second period goal from Ruslan Fedotenko by Frank Franklin II/AP Islanders 4 Rangers 3 (Shootout): This was not a game for fans of goaltenders. Henrik Lundqvist was terrible, Wade Dubielewicz was too but better when it counted and the Islanders prevailed in a sloppy game. Blake Comeau got things started when he scored by throwing the puck off of Michal Rozsival to put the Islanders in front. The Rangers......

Senator John McCain at a campaign stop in San Antonio, TX by Eric Gay/AP CNN, NBC, and the AP are projecting Senator John McCain will clinch the Republican presidential campaign, after winning the primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island and clinching the 1,191 delegates needed. A source tells NBC that President Bush has invited McCain to the White House tomorrow and will endorse him. McCain will be having a victory party in......

Today's weather is a winner! Sunny and warm with a high in the mid-50s. Enjoy it if you can as tomorrow and Wednesday will feature varying degrees of wetness. The culprit is a nasty cold front that currently slices the country in two from Chicago to San Antonio. In classic springtime severe weather fashion, a low pressure system is spinning up over the front in Texas this morning. The low will surf along the front......

In what could be his biggest personal accomplishment ever, Mr. Met is going to the Mascot Hall of Fame. Yesterday, the Mascot Hall of Fame named Mr. Met a member of its 2007 class along with the San Antonio Coyote. The Post, which is thumping its chest with the news, talked to Mets spokesman Jay Horowitz, "We're thrilled at what he does. He does a lot of good charity work, the kids love him, and......

There's one member of the Mets that is up for the Hall of Fame today. The Mascot Hall of Fame, that is. The round-headed ball of a mascot is trailing by about 5,500 votes in the race for popularity on the Mascot Hall of Fame website. He trails The Coyote, the mascot of the San Antonio Spurs. The Post pulls out all the stops to make sure Mr. Met is the top vote getter.......

Summertime is iced coffee time, and for some, it's when finding good iced coffee takes on the form of a quest. Cold brewed iced coffee (recipe here), with coffee iced cubes thrown in, seems to be the culmination of all the perennial "perfect cup" stories. A handful of spots along Flatbush Avenue in Midwood serve coffee that has been strained from a mixture of cold water and ground beans, and iced coffees aren't offered with......

Mr. Met's hat may be cocked, but he's not cocky after being nominated for the online entity that is the Mascot Hall of Fame. Mets organization officials said the usually mute mascot remained speechless at the honor. Induction is not a sure thing. Other candidates, which will be voted for online, include the Coyote for the San Antonio Spurs, Hugo the Hornet for the New Orleans Hornets, the Oriole bird for the Baltimore Orioles,......

Yankees 11 Mets 8: This game had a little bit of everything, a balk, a rain delay, four home runs, eight stolen bases, a switch-hitter batting righty against a righty and a sweaty finish for the Yankees. The Mets jumped out to the lead in the first after Tyler Clippard made the mistake of walking Jose Reyes. Reyes stole second and scored on a single by David Wright. Ruben Gotay homered to make it 2-0......

Pittsburgh 3 Rangers 2 (OT): To say New York hit a wall would be an understatement. After building a 2-0 lead through two periods, the Rangers came out and looked like they were skating in cement during the third period. They gave Pittsburgh too many chances, and the Penguins capitalized, tying the game in regulation before winning it off of a turnover in overtime. Jaromir Jagr missed the entire third period because of a leg......

It's not surprising news, but it's a reminder why people don't live in New York City. A report from the Independent Budget Office showed that New York City has the biggest tax burden than eight other big cities. In fact, NYC's tax burden is practically 50% higher than the average of cities like Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Houston, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix and San Diego. (We don't know where San Francisco, Boston, or Seattle......

It is getting impossible to root for the Knicks anymore. The franchise is completely lost, stuck over the salary cap for the rest of the decade and playing uninspired basketball. Now we learn that the head coach is running the team like a mob boss, ordering his players to take out opponents. These are the facts we know at this point. George Karl and Isiah Thomas do not get along at all. Karl is a......

Parents hoping to get their little Einsteins into some of the city's 137-odd programs for young and "gifted students" take note: The city has announced that it is now going to institute a uniform admissions test for all of them. What does this mean, exactly? For all "gifted" programs for prekindergarten through second grade applicants will need to take something called an OLSAT which measures students in four areas (verbal comprehension, verbal reasoning, figural......

The NYPD may be slashing its work force, but the FBI announced that NYC is once again the safest big city, while crime is rising in other cities across the country. Some stats for 2005: Overall crime dropped 4.3%, versus a 1.1% drop across the country, and violent crime fell 1.9% in NYC, versus a 2.5% increase in the country. But officials didn't want to make any promises about "lowest murder rate ever," as the......

If Vince Carter scores four points, the chances of the Nets winning that game become slim. Carter made just two of his 14 field goal attempts Monday, and the Jazz took care of the Nets 89-78 in Utah. The Jazz deserve plenty of credit for shutting down Carter, who forced bad shot after bad shot in the loss. His poor shooting was contagious; the Nets shot only 2 of 21 from three point range. Those......

Vince Carter and the Nets may have seen their ten-game winning streak snapped last night in a 96-91 loss at San Antonio, but Lawrence Frank's team has nothing to be ashamed of. Their streak may not have come against the best competition, but it was a desperately needed run that has vaulted them to a 19-13 record after their sluggish start. Vince Carter has shown his better half of late, and Jason Kidd continues to......

The Jets can finally say that their season is mercifully over. The good news is that they ended it with a 30-26 win over the Buffalo Bills. The bad news is the win moved them to the 4th pick in the NFL Draft behind Houston, New Orleans/San Antonio/etc, and Tennessee. The Jets win was keyed by Justin Miller's 95-yard kickoff return late in the 4th quarter to take the lead. Ty Law, the lone Jets......

After back-to-back collapses at home it was hard to see how things could get worse for the Knicks. Friday night they provided the answer, falling 122-111 to the Atlanta Hawks. The Hawks had won only four games prior to beating the Knicks. The Knicks defense was absent all night allowing the Hawks to score 71 points in the first half and to shoot an astounding 63.2% from the field for the game; the highest......

Holy cow. Last night's NBA Finals contest was about as tight and as exciting as a sporting event can be. The game was tied at halftime, tied at the end of regulation, and won at the end by one point on a 3-pointer. It was jaw-droppingly intense. And somehow, San Antonio scraped out a 96-95 OT win to go home with a 3-2 lead. For Detroit, Chauncey Billups just wrecked the Spurs defenders with 34......

While examining your weekend options, it's worth a mention that Game 2 of the NBA Finals is Sunday night at 9pm. If you haven't been to your local sports bar lately, it's a great excuse to pound some beer and wings with your buddies on a school night. The Spurs and Pistons kicked off The Finals last night, but the ratings for these supposedly "boring" teams were so low that a rerun of CSI actually......

While the basketball arenas of the New York area have been dark for almost two months, the NBA playoffs have been chugging on. For those of you who stopped watching in April, or hopefully earlier if you are a Knicks fan, the NBA Finals are upon us. This year, the World Champion, Detroit Pistons will take on the San Antonio Spurs for the title. The Spurs are led by Tim Duncan, their multi-talented Center. Duncan......

After a season filled with injuries, trades, and change, the Nets have somehow climbed right back into the Eastern playoff race this week. Two Philadelphia losses and two Net wins leave them a mere 1.5 games out of the NBA playoffs heading into April. On Wednesday, Carter and company breezed to a 95-78 win over the hapless L.A. Clippers, who never led in the contest. VC scored 31 and youngster Nenad Krstic added 17 in......

The NBA trading deadline, Gothamist's second favorite day of the year, was yesterday (our favorite day of the year has been well documented), and since you can't spell "trade deadline" without I.T., Knicks GM Isiah Thomas made not one, but two highly questionable deals in response to other moves made by Philadelphia and Boston. The first sent Nazr Mohammed, New York's only true center, and back up PG Jamison Brewer to San Antonio for malik......

Gothamist did an interview with the Associated Press about local blogs (which has turned up in a couple newspapers and websites). Since the AP decided to run a photograph with the story, we met up with AP photojournalist Bebeto Matthews in Midtown, near Rockefeller Center. After learning that Gothamist likes to blog about most anything we find interesting (and in order to avoid looking too posed), Matthews suggested taking a picture with David Combs,......

Rod Thorn threw in the towel last night and started discussing a sign and trade with the Nuggets that would ship Kenyon Martin out West. "You guys will find out soon. Something is going to happen soon," said Martin. By working out a sign and trade with Denver, Martin will get an extra year added to his contract, for a total of 7 years and $90 million, and the Nets will get some compensation......

Proving that nothing in New York is cheap, a recent study by Sportsbusinessnews.com confirmed that the New York Knickerbockers were officially the worst bargain in the league this season. When you divide the Knicks $94,395,091 payroll (highest in the league) by 39, the number of W’s they notched this season, the results show that each victory cost owner James Dolan $2,420,387. Need proof that shrewd cap mangement can put you in position to win a......

More and more the USA Basketball committee that is selecting the 12 players for this summer’s Olympic basketball squad are hearing "I’m out", especially since the recent bombings in Athens. All this makes Gothamist wonder, who's in? Players that have turned down bids to play for Team USA include Seattle’s Ray Allen (fiancé giving birth this summer), Jersey’s Jason Kidd (nagging injuries), Toronto’s Vince Carter (getting married this summer), Minnesoata’s Kevin Garnett (fatigue from......

Fill out those brackets! The Road to San Antonio begins. It's that time of year, sports fans nationwide are making their picks, filling out their brackets, hoping they choose the winner of this year's NCAA Basketball Tournament. Which one of the 65 teams will emerge as champion? Gothamist remembers winning once way back in high school, but has not had tournament success since. For those IRS auditors out there, we were playing with imaginary......