Tri-State Hockey Podcast · The Nation Network

Episode 25: Panarin Out, Isles Sweep, Devils Reeling

February 6, 2026·1 hr 22 min·5 clips

Key discussion

Johnny Lazarus opens with Arthur Staple and Mike Rupp. They do not linger before getting into the Islanders, because the room is already reacting to New York sweeping the season series against both the Devils and the Rangers, which gives Arthur a lot to smile about and gives everyone else plenty to gripe about. The tone stays sharp right away. The hosts joke about the lighting, the mood, and how the good team gets to bask in it while the struggling side might as well be left in the dark, and that back-and-forth keeps things loose before the heavier hockey talk starts. Then the voicemails kick in. One listener asks whether the Rangers should really be framed as a retool or whether things have already drifted into rebuild territory, and then asks how much patience Chris Drury has actually earned after the Panarin situation. Johnny says his view on Panarin has changed because Panarin has said Los Angeles is the only place he wants to go, and once a player has made that clear there may only be so much leverage left to work with. The group keeps it straightforward. They talk through the idea that if a player has already narrowed the landing spots, waiting longer may not really buy anything, even if patience sounds better in theory. From there, the discussion gets wider. The panel says the rebuild or retool label matters less than the actual sequence of moves, because a team can lose pieces one by one and still leave everyone arguing about what the roster truly is. Rupp keeps it blunt. He draws the line between a roster that has truly been torn down and one that still has enough established NHL pieces to avoid the full rebuild tag, and that helps the rest of the table separate a midseason selloff from a total reset. Nobody settles the label debate. Instead, the show keeps coming back to what the Rangers should do next, what patience looks like in real terms, and how front offices should respond when the market and the player have already narrowed the options. The Islanders keep the bragging rights, but the real draw is the conversation under that headline, because the episode turns the sweep into a bigger argument about leverage, roster construction, trade value, and the uneasy feeling of watching a team drift into an awkward identity. It stays conversational the whole way through, and it closes with the usual loose panel energy, a reminder about the live event on February 19th, and the sense that these are hockey people thinking out loud instead of sanding everything down into a polished studio line.

As heard by us

The Islanders get the bragging rights, while the Rangers-Devils debate gives the episode its edge.

The Tri-State hierarchy is the headline here: the Islanders take the bragging rights after sweeping the season series against the Devils and Rangers, and the other two teams are left under a very public spotlight.

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Why you'd press play

You want Tri-State hockey heat without the polished postgame filter.

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