On the first day of Rangers training camp in 2003 at Burlington, a young man out of Harvard named Dominic Moore sent Mark Messier flying to the ice in an open-ice collision in the neutral zone.
“I looked up at the last second and didn’t know who it was,” the then 23-year-old center said. “I was just trying to protect myself. It was basically an accident.
“After my visor was cleaned off, I figured out pretty quick who it was. You never know if you’re going to have a flying elbow come at you. But he was real nice about it.
“I’m just doing my best to make the team.”
Moore did not make the club out of his first pro training camp, though he would play five games with the Rangers that season, during the first of which in Montreal on Nov. 1, 2003 he recorded three assists.
But he did make the Blueshirts and the NHL for good in 2005-06, spending the year centering Ryan Hollweg and Jed Ortmeyer on the effective and popular HMO fourth line before going to Nashville for Adam Hall on the front end of a three-way deal with Pittsburgh following the season that would trigger a nine-team odyssey across seven seasons.
Now, Moore is returning to where it all began after signing a one-year, $1 million contract with the Blueshirts on an opening day of the free-agent market when the Rangers did not have enough cap space to make either a big splash or a big mistake.
The Rangers also signed veteran winger Benoit Pouliot to a one-year deal worth $1.3 million and 30-year-old defenseman Aaron Johnson to a one-year deal worth $600,000.
The three signings leave the club little wiggle room in negotiations with Group II free agents Ryan McDonagh, Derek Stepan, Carl Hagelin and Mats Zuccarello.
The club’s interest in Moore was reported exclusively in The Post in yesterday’s editions. The center, who will turn 33 next month, sat out last season following the death of his wife, Katie, who lost her battle against a rare form of liver cancer on Jan. 7, one day after the lockout was settled.
As The Post previously reported, the Rangers had talked with Moore before the lockout commenced in September about bringing him back to Broadway last year if his wife’s medical condition had so allowed.
Moore, who has recorded 185 career points (67 goals, 118 assists) in 530 games while skating for the Rangers, Penguins, Wild, Maple Leafs, Sabres, Panthers, Canadiens, Lightning and Sharks, will be a candidate to kill penalties.
Pouliot, who will turn 27 in September, is a role-player whose best season came two years ago when he recorded 32 points (16-16) in 74 games with the Bruins.
Johnson, meanwhile, joins recently acquired Justin Falk as depth replacements on the blue line for free agents Steve Eminger, Roman Hamrlik and Matt Gilroy, who will not be re-signed. A left-hand shot, Johnson played 10 games for the Bruins last year before finishing the season with AHL Providence.
The defenseman is also the sixth Ranger with ties to the 2011-12 Blue Jackets, joining Rick Nash, Derick Brassard, Derek Dorsett, John Moore and assistant coach Scott Arniel. Columbus went 11-25-5 before Arniel was fired midway through that season.
* Lacking the cap space, the Rangers never engaged seriously with free agent Ryane Clowe, who scooted to New Jersey for a five-year deal worth $24.25 million. Clowe played 12 regular-season games (three goals, five assists) and two playoff games (no goals, one assist) for the Rangers after coming to the club from San Jose at the trade deadline for the final cost of second- and third-round picks in 2013 and a fifth-rounder next year.
If the Blueshirts had re-signed Clowe, who sustained a pair of concussions 16 days apart in the penultimate match of the regular season and Game 5 of the Washington first-round series, next year’s fifth-rounder would have become a second-round selection.