The New York Rangers are New York City’s hockey team, one of
three area teams that play in the NHL.
They are one of the six original franchises to play in the league,
starting in 1926 at Madison Square Garden, where they still play today. The team started off great, having the league’s
best record in their first season and winning their first of four Stanley Cups,
the league championship trophy, in their second.
Let’s Go Rangers!
The Rangers have had plenty of ups and downs along the years,
and in the process they’ve built up an impressive army of some of the most
devoted and rabid fans of any team, in any sport. Going to a Ranger game is an experience like
no other, and I’ve been witness to several people who’ve gone into the Garden
to catch one with little or no interest beforehand and come out converted and
bleeding Ranger blue.
Hockey, in my opinion, is the most exciting sport
around. Where baseball and football can
be slow-moving, and a whole basketball game can be watched in the last two
minutes, hockey is non-stop action from buzzer to buzzer that’s almost
guaranteed to have you on the edge of your seat for a good portion of the game.
Watching a hockey game with 19,000 other fans at MSG makes
it even more exciting, and that energy I spoke of the other night, that NYC
energy, is always strongly present. The
cheers that erupt after a goal, the “oohs and aahs” after near misses, the collective
sighs at opposing goals and the thunderous “Let’s Go Rangers” chants all give
the home team a boost like no other, and the team members take notice. After each home game, all of the players take
to the center ice to turn to the crowd and salute their supporters. Pretty cool, huh? The love is definitely mutual!
Potvin Sucks!
New Yorkers have a reputation for being loud and boisterous
people, and there’s no doubt that Ranger games at Madison Square Garden have confirmed
that notion. Opposing teams have had to
bear the wrath of rabid Ranger lovers for years, and area adversaries the New York
Islanders and the New Jersey Devils have had to experience the worst of it. Rivalries between the teams have been
intensified over the years by fierce, competitive games nearly every time, and plenty
of tight playoff series’ over the years.
The Islanders have been undoubtedly the Rangers’ fiercest
rivals ever since they built an early dynasty in their history to show up their
older sibling team. I first started to
take interest in the Rangers during a playoff run in 1979 in which they faced
the Islanders in the semifinals. The Rangers
hadn’t won a Cup in 39 years, fueling the dreaded chant that greeted them
whenever they visited an opponent’s building.
They went on to beat the Islanders in a thrilling, seven-game series,
but lost in the finals to the Montreal Canadiens in five.
The “1940, 1940” chorus began and was always the most
vicious at the Nassau Coliseum, where the Islanders play. That taunting mantra fed into a rivalry
between the teams’ fans that was as intense as that of the teams themselves. In 1979, Rangers’ fans got to make up their
own chant during a game in February.
For years, Islanders’ Hall of Fame defenseman Dennis Potvin
was a thorn in the Rangers’ side. One of
the most vital members of the Islanders’ impressive four-year run at the
Stanley Cup in the early 80’s, he was always a hated adversary at the
Garden. In February of that year, Potvin
inspired a chant from the rafters at MSG that endured for years after he had
retired. On February 2th, 1979, Potvin gave
what many thought was a dirty check to Rangers’ star forward Ulf Nilsson, which
ended up with the latter suffering a broken ankle. Nilsson’s career was ended and Ranger fans
were pissed!
“Potvin sucks!” was the reaction of the Rangers’ faithful,
and that ever-present chant has never gone away. To this day, especially during a Rangers-Islanders
game at MSG, fans will suddenly burst out into “Potvin
sucks” mode at virtually any time, just to voice their dislike of the
opposing team. Check out a little clip
about the famous, 30-plus year-old chant here:
1994
Being a Rangers fan is a labor of love. For years, Ranger fans suffered losing
seasons with sometimes heartbreaking endings and that dreaded “1940” chant was
an achingly consistent reminder of the “curse,” a widely believed myth that the
team had been cursed to not win a championship in that long of a time. That all changed in 1994, when the NY
Rangers, led by Captain Mark Messier, Brian Leetch, Adam Graves, Mike Richter
and company, went on to win both the President’s Trophy for having the best
regular season record and the long-awaited Stanley Cup. The so-called “curse” was over and the
Rangers were the pride of New York.
2012
Right now the Rangers are in the playoffs and hopes for the
Stanley Cup are at the highest they’ve been since that championship year in
1994. Led by team captain Ryan Callahan,
new Rangers’ players have given the city something to be excited and hopeful
about. Players such as All-Star
goaltender Hendrik Lundqvist, Marian Gaborik, Brad Richards and others hope to
recapture the glory that the Rangers haven’t felt in already 18 years, and
right now things are already tense.
The Rangers won the Regular Season Eastern Conference title with
109 points and are thus the top seed, playing the 8th place Ottawa
Senators with home-ice advantage in a best of seven series. At the moment, the series is tied at two
games apiece, but the two Ranger losses were both tough ones, both come from
behind wins for Ottawa, and both were lost in overtime, including the last one
in Ottawa. Ranger fans like me have
learned to be cautious with our hopes, and tomorrow night’s Game 5 showdown is
gonna be critical, for sure, but I dunno, I got a good feeling about this
year. We’ll just have to wait and see.
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