{"id":549935,"date":"2026-04-11T01:09:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/549935\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T01:09:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T01:09:17","slug":"brian-leetch-in-awe-of-rookie-year-matthew-schaefer-has-carved-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/549935\/","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":549936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[12136,5,122,3328,159,35,5190,5189,4,43,350,336],"class_list":{"0":"post-549935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-brian-leetch","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-islanders","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-islanders","13":"tag-new-york-rangers","14":"tag-newyork","15":"tag-newyorkislanders","16":"tag-nhl","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-sports-columnists","19":"tag-sports-plus"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116383407604969476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}