NHL

GRAVES JOINS RANGERS GREATS

After Rangers he won with, current Rangers he counsels, the tiniest fraction of persons whose lives Adam Graves has touched had been introduced on his night, he asked one question.

“As I look up in the rafters at the names and numbers it is clear how hard it is for me to imagine my name there,” he said. “So I pinch myself everyday and ask, how did I get here?

“The only answer was that I tried to keep it simple and work as hard as I could.”

That’s not only the why, but the spirit in which a banner for perhaps the most selfless Ranger ever went to the ceiling tonight, after he had remembered to thank all the players who played for the franchise since its birth in 1926.

Current captains Markus Naslund, Scott Gomez and Chris Drury hoisted No. 9 to the rafters, with a respect enhanced by their knowledge that Andy Bathgate and Harry Howell will follow Graves in number retirement Feb. 22, too many years after it should have happened for both of them.

It took too long because memories can be short, because the Rangers not only won no Cups during their era but didn’t even come close.

So if, honoring one more player from 1994, hanging the No. 9 of one of the most popular and giving players in the team’s history, pushed management into doing the right thing by an accomplished previous Rangers No. 9, then that’s a good thing. And it will turn into an even better thing if the Garden ever gets around to raising banners for Bill Cook and Frank Boucher.

Both Hall of Famers, dominant players of the Rangers’ first decade, should have gone to the ceiling before Ed Giacomin, Rod Gilbert, Brian Leetch, Mark Messier and Mike Richter, and probably would have if Garden managements hadn’t been afraid of mocking their own extended failures by retiring the numbers of players who too long ago had won the franchise’s then-three Stanley Cups.

The chance to tell Boucher and Cook how much they meant to the Rangers passed with two of them in 1977 and 1986, respectfully. But as long as the franchise wants to boast of a history that frankly is more checkered than storied, it is never too late to right a wrong.

Cook was an original Ranger, a three-time NHL goal scoring leader, a three-time first team All-Star, and a two-time Stanley Cup champion in 1927-28 and 1932-33. Boucher was a three-time first team all-star who played on those champion teams, too, in addition to coaching the Rangers to the 1940 Stanley Cup that stood as the franchise’s last for 54 years.

Because there is little to no first-hand remembrance of either player, is no excuse to allow the ESPN generation to be unaware of what Cook and Boucher did, which was essentially make Tex Richard’s Rangers an initial hit and jump-start the franchise to its current popularity.

There is nothing marginal about either player’s credentials. Also, nothing but the vanity of the persons who run the World’s Most Famous Arena to make nights like this one as much about the show as the honor, to keep those same people from calling Cook and Boucher survivors, picking a night, and keeping the ceremonies short as the ovations probably would be light.

All that would be understandable, but if nobody alive today remembers how these players looked, it should never be forgotten what they did, which is certainly as much, if not more, for the franchise as any Ranger who has ever experienced the ultimate honor Adam Graves did.