The team that captured the imagination of this city for the greater part of the decade … has become simply a hockey team again – a boring hockey team, at that – and therefore irrelevant to huge, important segments of the population.
HERE’S all you need to know about what the Rangers have become in this city, now nearly five years after owning it:
On Feb. 19, Madison Square Garden Network will bump the Blueshirts-Penguins match off of its two main outlets in order to televise the Knicks-Sixers on MSG and the Devils-Red Wings on Fox Sports New York.
Forget about whatever tortured, politically vetted explanations network executives issue for moving the Rangers to MSG Metro, an outlet unavailable to approximately 1 million MSG subscribers. The fact is, MSG’s Cablevision ownership has done what would have been unthinkable even one year ago.
It has relegated the Rangers to Second Hockey Team status.
Think about this for a moment.
The owners of the Rangers have effectively announced that their own team’s game is not the most attractive hockey game to televise on Feb. 19. That the Suits are inherently correct in their evaluation has no bearing on the implications of the decision.
The Rangers playing second fiddle to the Devils on MSG.
But then, this is just a part of the larger story of the Rangers under Cablevision’s direction the last two years. The team that captured the imagination of this city for the greater part of the decade and accrued unprecedented celebrity status and recognition, has become simply a hockey team again – a boring hockey team, at that – and therefore irrelevant to huge, important segments of the population.
The team that gained marquee recognition so great that its 1994 Stanley Cup victory had Sports Illustrated decreeing the following week that the NHL was in position to surpass the NBA in popularity, has gone back to the dark days of anonymity. Back to the days before Mark Messier rode in on his white horse from Edmonton.
Really, though, it’s even worse than that. Because back when the Rangers were just a hockey team before Messier, during the Smurfs, and when Jean Guy Talbot was wearing a sweatsuit behind the bench; when Pete Stemkowski was scoring in triple overtime against the Blackhawks and Red Berenson was hitting the post against the Canadiens; then, and through all of those years in the old Garden and new, the Rangers at least could claim the singular devotion of their passionate fans.
No longer.
It’s true. The Rangers have been deadly at the Garden this year. But the fans in the building have on most nights been deader than the team. It’s all changed in the air space above Penn Station since the Cup championship, if not since Messier’s dismissal. The energy level that once gave the Rangers an edge before every opening faceoff is as missing as the Rangers on the back page or the radio talk show station.
In its place, instead, are boredom and thousands of empty seats, in prime locations. Seats in the rows adjacent to the lower press box go unfilled more often than not. Those that are filled are occupied by different faces almost every night.
I’ve been going to the new Garden since the day it opened for hockey 31 years ago, and I’ve never before seen anything like what’s going on this year. Few in the building seem to be passionate Ranger fans; most appear to be part of an audience taking in a performance, with nothing at all at stake in its outcome.
Maybe it’s because the ticket prices are so obscenely expensive. Maybe it’s because a huge portion of the Ranger fan base decided after the Cup victory that nothing could ever again be that sweet, so those devoted, passionate souls simply surrendered their tickets.
Whatever, there’s a palpable disconnect between the Garden audience and the Rangers. The customers chat on their cell phones, and order from the food delivery service. But they don’t chant and they don’t cheer – unless, of course the Rangers happen to score a goal – and they don’t act like Ranger fans I’ve always known, that’s for sure. They don’t seem to care.
The house is as dead as Ranger mystique.
Garden management dismissed Messier within days of re-signing Patrick Ewing in July 1997. At the time, I believed the decisions to be mutually exclusive. I still do; the call to let Messier go were hockey and personal decisions made by those who had simply grown tired of the captain’s charismatic hold on the team.
But now, coming up on two years later, Garden ownership’s tilt toward the Knicks has never been more pronounced. Every major action is a Knick action. Every bold move is a bold move toward bringing a basketball championship back to this city.
Meanwhile, the captain of the Rangers, distinguished soldier Brian Leetch, who has put in 11 years with the team and is among the handful of greatest players ever to wear the uniform, cannot even get Cablevision to engage in serious negotiations to assure that he remains in New York.
On Monday morning, the Rangers skated at Rye without Leetch, who was suffering from the flu, and without Wayne Gretzky, who was nursing injured ribs. It was a stunning glimpse at what the future of this team may be as soon as next year, if Cablevision isn’t very careful.
It was like looking at a corpse.
Once and in a galaxy not so far away, the Rangers shined as brightly as any constellation. They broke through the glass ceiling that keeps hockey down below every other sport. Now, they’ve gone all the way back.
Now, they’re merely a hockey team.
Now, they’re merely a hockey team whose own ownership can’t find a place for them on either of its primary network outlets on the night of Feb. 19.
The famous sign on June 14, 1994 said, “Now I Can Die in Peace.”
Five years later, that’s exactly what the Rangers have done.