Thomas vaults to third with 8-under round

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Justin Thomas has spent the better part of the past two months fighting.

The 27-year-old has been fighting his game, which hasn’t resembled his No. 3 world ranking of late.

And he has been fighting to restore his reputation, after getting hammered on social media following the homophobic slur he muttered to himself after missing a short putt at the Sony Open in January that happened to be picked up by a TV boom microphone.

On a sun-splashed Saturday at

TPC Sawgrass for the third round of the Players Championship, Thomas set himself up to change the conversation on both narratives by posting a tournament-low 8-under 64 to get to 10-under.

The moving-day round vaulted Thomas up the leaderboard to a tie for third place, three shots behind leader Lee Westwood.

“Golf is so fun when you’re playing well and when things are going well [and] it’s really easy,’’ Thomas said. “But this game isn’t like that, unfortunately. I’ve had definitely my fair share of lows this season … just a lot of stuff going on mentally that I felt like I’ve never had to deal with and maybe taking things for granted or just not enjoying the game.

“Being irritable, being frustrated, emotional on the golf course is not good for me. Good golf and fun, unfortunately and fortunately, works together for the most part. I wish my mood and emotions weren’t so dependent on my golf, but golf is my life and it is my job and I care a lot about it and I care a lot about how I play. So, it unfortunately does make and break my mood.

“I’m trying to get better. I mean, I’m growing up a little bit, but at the same time it means a lot to me and playing well and winning tournaments means a lot as well.’’

Thomas, who birdied the first four holes of his round, eagled the par-5 16th hole, which was the turning point of his entire tournament during Friday’s second round.

Thomas was hovering precariously on the cutline, at even-par, when he arrived at the 16th hole Friday. He scrambled for a birdie, then followed that with a birdie on 18 to get to 2-under for the week and set the stage for a weekend run.

“I told myself I thought 10-under had a pretty good chance to win the tournament going into this weekend,’’ Thomas said. “You know where the pins are going to be, and the greens are going to get a little bit more baked out. It’s going to be a little windier, and it’s a Sunday of a Players. It’s a huge event and nerves are going to be there. So, I knew that [Saturday] was important.’’

Thomas, who has 13 career PGA Tour victories and won three times last year, badly wants to add a Players Championship title to his résumé.

“There’s such an array and deep list of champions at this tournament,’’ Thomas said. “It’s a tournament I’d like to be a champion of. I feel like I will win it, hopefully multiple times. I get excited every time I come here.’’

The shutout streak stands as 113:29 for Keith Kinkaid in the wake of Saturday’s 4-0 victory in Boston in which No. 71 recorded his eighth career NHL blanking and first since his 3-0 triumph for the Devils in Philadelphia on Nov. 15, 2018.

“It’s definitely very rewarding,” said the 31-yearold netminder, who signed a two-year free agent deal with the Rangers after spending most of last season in the AHL as a member of the Montreal organization following five seasons with New Jersey. “My season ended in March last year and I had a lot of training over the summer.

“I’ve been working with Benoit Allaire here, there’s a lot of work to be done, but I knew last year was a fluke and a little of an unfortunate situation, so there’s a good vibe here. Everyone in this organization trusts me and I just want to prove to them that I can still play. I’m very pumped for this.”

Kinkaid was promoted from the taxi squad on March 5 in the wake of Igor Shesterkin’s groin strain the previous night. Alexandar Georgiev’s struggles have opened the door for Kinkaid,

who has been unflappable in two starts and two relief outings in which he has compiled a 1.53 goalsagainst average and .935 save percentage in 195:55.

“He made the saves he had to, and he made timely ones for sure,” coach David Quinn said of the 18-save performance, in which Kinkaid was tested quite rarely. “You never win a game 4-0 and not have your goalie contribute. He contributed.

“He’s an NHL goalie. We know that. You know you’re going to need depth this year — you need depth every year — and though it was obviously a little bit tough stretch for him over the last year-and-a-half, we thought we had signed a guy who could play in the National Hockey League and help us, and he has.”

➤ The Blueshirts and the Bruins each went 0-for-5 in 9:16 on the power play, with the Rangers getting eight shots with the man-advantage and Boston getting five. While the first unit chewed up time, Artemi Panarin on for 7:04 and Chris Kreider and Mika

Zibanejad each on for over 6:30 and Ryan Strome just 10 seconds under that, Filip Chytil was displaced from the second unit.

Chytil got only 21 seconds with the man-advantage as Quinn went with a second unit of Pavel Buchnevich, Kaapo Kakko and Alexis Lafreniere up front with Jacob Trouba and K’Andre Miller at the back.

➤ Brett Howden was a healthy scratch for the first time in his three-year career. The 22-year-old, who had played 113 consecutive games since returning from an MCL injury on

March 3, 2019, has two points and no goals in 25 games this season.

Julien Gauthier, whose play had been on the uptick before Thursday’s game in Boston swallowed him up, just as pretty much every one of his teammates, was also scratched up front.

Jack Johnson was scratched on defense while Anthony Bitetto was assigned to the taxi squad.

➤ The Blueshirts are home for a pair against the Flyers on Monday and Wednesday before going to Washington for a back-toback Friday and Saturday.

SPARE me the nostalgia over a theme song that probably not one of the big-money folks over at ESPN, who have spent years on air without mentioning the NHL, could identify even if LeBron James and Tom Brady were humming it.

Don’t preach to me about how much the NHL will benefit from the exposure of having its games televised on one or another of Disney’s platforms, streaming or otherwise. Here’s what I have always wanted to know: What would possess a grown-up outside of Bristol, Conn., to ever refer to a television network as “the mothership” or “the worldwide leader?”

There is one thing and one thing alone of importance attached to the NHL’s media-rights deal with Disney, ESPN and their affiliated brands that include the Hulu streaming service, and that is the money.

This is Slap Shots’ Rod Tidwell moment: Show me the money and tell me how quickly its introduction into league revenue will be able to erase the NHL Players’ Association’s escrow debt that threatens to strangle the league beyond the expiration of the current collective bargaining agreement. That’s all that counts. The salary cap, according to the agreement forged last summer, cannot rise more than $1 million per season until the escrow debt is paid off. Beyond that, if a certain amount of escrow debt remains on the ledger in 2024-25, the sides would have to come up with a formula under which the PA would pay back the league in full following the 2025-26 expiration of the CBA. Won’t that be fun? Kids who are currently age 13 and playing Bantam hockey would wind up paying for this.

The deal with ESPN is believed to be worth approximately $420 million per year. A secondary package yet to be negotiated or completed with a second media-rights partner is expected to account for approximately $200M per. That obviously represents a substantial increase over the $200M per the NHL is receiving under its current agreement with the NBC networks, but probably is not the grand slam home run — OK, natural hat trick — the league might have envisioned before the pandemic struck.

The escrow debt at the end of this season is likely to be around $900M. If the players simply return their half of the incoming TV money, that’s what, around $310M per? So it would take three years of media rights cash to offset the current debt.

Except the debt will almost certainly grow due to annual payroll escrow overage. There is still no telling about what next season’s protocols might entail and whether full houses will be permitted across the league. But even if league revenues rebound to the $5 billion mark that was projected for a completed 2019-20, escrow withholdings were at 14 percent.

After next season’s escrow will be capped at between 16 and 18 percent, it will be capped at 10 percent in 2022-23 and at six percent the following three years of the agreement. So, unless the NHL generates additional revenue-producing initiatives, there will be spillage each season, and where and when it will stop, nobody quite knows.

Maybe the NHL will flourish with exposure on ESPN, maybe the network will direct other properties onto its Plus-streaming site and hockey will reap additional benefits from that. But this deal was all about the money. The NHL will only be indebted to ESPN if this deal is able to cover the PA debt.

➤ Not so much this season, when it has all gone wrong in Buffalo, but even when Taylor Hall was having his Hart Trophy season in New Jersey 14 years ago (What’s that? It was just three years ago?), there were folks all over the league talking about how the winger was a “me” guy in a “we” sport.

So would the Islanders, the Ultimate We Team run by the Ultimate We Guys, Lou Lamoriello and Barry Trotz, dare attempt to bring Hall into the mix as a rental at the trade deadline if the injury to Anders Lee is as serious as might appear?

Here is the rule about Lamoriello: There are no rules.

When you think you know what he is going to do, you don’t.

➤ Truth be told, ESPN does include a cadre of professionals who surely will treat hockey with loving care, though it is inevitable the network will do its best to dumb down the sport, as it does so regularly with most of its other properties.

If there is a petition out there needing signatures to get Gary Thorne onto next season’s roster of play-by-play people, you can just add mine electronically right this moment.