Winter in New York is becoming a frigid time. Not just with the weather outside, but also with the sports situation. The Giants season will be ending too soon in January, leaving New York sports fans with the choices of the New York Islanders, the New York Rangers, the Buffalo Sabres, and the New York Knicks. Pretty soon the Nets will be coming over the bridge and settling in Brooklyn, but even then that will be a club without Jason Kidd.

The state of all sports between football and baseball is simply depressing. Tickets to Madison Square Garden are tickets to Knicks games and Rangers games. The Knicks are starting over-again- and the Rangers just lost their top scorer to a club in Russia. Yes, Jagr was getting old, really old, but still losing the leading scorer and replacing him with a young unproven right winger like Nikolai Zherdov is not exactly the most comforting feeling in the world.

Some fans are really high on Zherdov and excited by a line of him with Scott Gomez and Markus Naslund, but I would like to see some proof first. Fans are equally excited by the new Knicks under head coach Mike D’Antoni, but the team is far away from showing anything but glimpses of hope.

Lumping Buffalo in with the Islanders is not necessarily fair, but the Sabres missed the playoffs last season. They may play pretty well, but they also play in a very tough Northeast Division. Sabres tickets may become playoff tickets, but Islanders’ seats definitely will not.

Luckily New Jersey is not the far away for the fickle sports fan. They can jump on the band wagon to see the Devils in the playoffs or Vince Carter dunk all over everybody in a Nets uniform, but the true New York sports fan will suffer through a winter that only a breakout year by a young star can salvage.