BOY, OH BOY-LE: Brian Boyle had never scored a goal in the playoffs entering this season, but has scored in the first three games against the Senators. (AP)
One by one, the proud father of Rangers hero Brian Boyle runs down the names and ages of his 13 children. Artie Boyle is a man who used an undying faith to score a miracle goal against terminal cancer, a man with 15 grandchildren now, a father who lost one of those 13 children to SIDS at the age of two months.
So this is a family that knows life is no breakaway, and that if you are lucky enough, if you believe enough, triumph sometimes has a chance to overcome tragedy, and maybe you can even get to cheer your son as he chases a Stanley Cup with the New York Rangers.
“Brian’s always played well in big-game situations and pressure situations his whole life, it doesn’t matter what the sport was,” Artie Boyle said last night from Hingham, Mass.
It was Artie Boyle who three years ago asked Los Angeles Kings general manager Dean Lombardi at Boston’s Hilton Logan Airport if he would consider trading Brian to the East Coast.
“Any place but Boston,” Artie Boyle said, and chuckled, “but get him back to the East Coast. The pressure of coming to play in our hometown is ridiculous. Especially this town. The fans are crazy!”
Boyle paused and added: “And I could never afford to buy all the tickets!”
There would be no need. “Within two weeks, he [Lombardi] traded him to the best possible city he could have traded him,” Boyle said. “It was like a dream come true.”
It was more like a nightmare in the beginning. Brian Boyle struggled mightily with the Rangers. That’s when his mother Judy implored him to say a novena.
“He just prayed for nine days,” Judy Boyle said. “Pray to St. Jude and ask him to calm you down and give you insight and to bless you.”
At the end of those nine days, Boyle was a different player. “We’re a family of believers,” Judy Boyle said, “and he’s very much a part of that.”
Only years later did Brian learn the extent of his father’s battle with cancer, this one starting in a kidney that would be surgically removed, and then lodging in his lungs. This was in 2000.
“They gave me a five percent chance to live,” Artie Boyle said.
At the urging of his brother-in-law, Kevin Gill, and dear friend Rob Griffin, Boyle traveled to a Marian apparition site in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he spent 10 days engaged in a state of meditation through prayer, even praying on top of a mountain.
“They knew I was sick,” Artie Boyle said. “They didn’t know it was that desperate.”
The Miracle on Ice you know. Here was The Miracle Off Ice. The cancer disappeared.
“I came back, surgery was canceled, and I was healed,” Boyle said.
Only when Brian drove his mother to a wedding in Manchester, N.H., would he learn the extent of his father’s ordeal.
“My husband has a tape that has his whole story on it,” Judy Boyle said.
For one hour, Brian listened intently to his father’s voice.
“I remember him being very emotional about it that day,” she recalls.
She remembers Brian, her seventh child, turning to her and saying: “I never knew you thought he was going to die.”
Except she never did.
“I always believed he was going to live,” Judy Boyle said.
Brian was only two when SIDS claimed his brother Joseph.
“I do remember when my Timothy was born,” Judy said. “Brian was 11 or 12, and he knew he had lost a brother, and he had two sisters subsequently.”
And so 14 years ago, inside South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass., a joyous Brian Boyle said to his mother, “I finally got my little brother!”
Timothy will be watching Game 4 tonight at the Gill home with mom and dad and several other Boyles. Watching big, 6-foot-7, 250-pound big brother.
“He was a huge human being even from a young age,” Artie Boyle said, “so he’d always come up against the so-called cocky guys a few years ahead of him in school. The ones who thought they were tough. Kids that were his age, or the underdogs, he’d always take them under his wing.”
Brian’s family was his team, and Judy was the coach.
“My wife always says, ‘If you’re not doing your job, you’re going to sit on the bench,’” Artie said with a chuckle, “and none of them wanted to sit on the bench.”
Mom and dad watched in horror when Brian was attacked by Senators enforcer Matt Carkner.
“You can never get Brian to throw the first punch if his life depended on it,” Artie said.
What was his wife’s reaction when it happened?
“That he [Carkner] should be suspended for 50 games!” Artie said, laughing. “That guy should have gotten three games and [Carl] Hagelin should have gotten one.”
Judy prays for protection for Brian.
“He’s a very tough kid, but I never raised him to fight,” she said. “I’m not happy with the NHL when they allow all of this.”
The conversation that night with Brian went something like this:
Judy: “Somebody should do something about that.”
Brian: “Yeah, mom.”
“Then,” Judy said, “he changed the subject.”
When they spoke following Brian’s game-winning goal in Game 3, the conversation went something like this:
Judy: “Great goal!”
Brian: “Thanks mom.”
“He feels like it was a team effort,” Judy said. “There were two assists on that goal.”
Brian Boyle has scored goals in each of the Rangers’ first three games of the Eastern Conference quarterfinal against Ottawa after scoring just 11 goals in the regular season.
“It’s fun talking to my parents and my siblings and stuff,” he said. “They’re very, very supportive. I’m very lucky to have their support. They’ve been supportive throughout the whole year.”
So go ahead and root for Brian Boyle.
“I’m hoping they go the whole way,” Judy Boyle says.
“That would be just the best, won’t it?”
steve.serby@nypost.com