He was a 13-year-old boy fighting for his life in the spring of 1994, attacked suddenly and mercilessly by a virus that left him ravaged with shortness of breath and extreme fatigue, in desperate need of a new heart.
Twenty years later, the boy is a man, a 33-year-old attorney in Manhattan, a true Comeback Kid eternally grateful for an unforgettable hospital visit from Mark Messier. So if anyone is going to believe in his Rangers as they fight for their hockey lives down 0-3 to the Kings in the Stanley Cup finals, it is him.
“I was down on the canvas, and I got up at the count of nine,” Brian Bluver was saying Tuesday over the phone. “You gotta keep fighting and battling, and that’s what life’s about, you gotta fight adversity. Life’s full of those curveballs, and you just gotta knock ’em out of the park.”
At a time when this Rangers fan from birth was at death’s door in a Columbia Presbyterian hospital room, in walked Messier … with the Stanley Cup in tow.
Twenty years later, Brian Bluver credits the doctors — in particular Dr. Mehmet Oz — and The Man Above, but he has never stopped believing nevertheless that maybe a miracle Messier hip check on the Grim Reaper somehow played a role in keeping him alive.
“I had died twice in the two weeks leading up to the transplant,” Bluver said.
He had been transferred from Schneider Children’s Hospital of Long Island Jewish Medical Center and awakened at Columbia Presbyterian from a medically induced coma when Messier and the Cup arrived with teammate Nick Kypreos.
“I didn’t think it was real,” Bluver recalled. “I thought I’d died. It was next-level stuff. I mean, the Cup there, and then he brought a stick from the championship game which he presented to me that he scored a goal with. He said, ‘I want you to have this.’”
“I think at that point, you’re just trying to help them fight through it,” Messier told The Post, “giving them some inspiration, some motivation to keep fighting and to get better, and that there’s a purpose out there, and whatever small thread you can give anybody in times like that to hang onto is what you learn is most valuable. And sure enough he was able to get there and get through it.”
Bluver had missed Messier’s Guarantee in Game 6 against the Devils. He didn’t miss Messier’s next Guarantee.
“He said, ‘I guarantee that you’ll be on the bench Opening Night when the Rangers raise the banner,’ ” Bluver recalled.
Five days later, they found Brian Bluver a heart.
“Fortunately I got a heart, which was an exact match, so to speak, a 14-year-old boy unfortunately in a car accident, brain dead,” Bluver said. “If I hadn’t gotten a heart that weekend, I wouldn’t have made it.”
To the Bluver family, the assist belongs to Mark Messiah.
“To tell you the truth, I think it kept him alive for the next five days,” Bill Bluver, the father, said by phone.
“It definitely gave me something to hold on to. I wanted to live,” Brian Bluver said. “It wasn’t my time to go. I wanted to live. I had a feeling that I’d be able to overcome this situation somehow, somehow a heart was gonna come. Messier’s words — and Kypreos’ words — were definitely inspirational, and to say the least, very influential.”
Messier: “You’re always, I guess, humbled by the fact that you can play a part in a young child’s life like that at the time, and help give a source of inspiration to keep fighting.”
Brian Bluver was asked when he thanked Messier for the first time.
“Probably when I raised the banner,” he said.
What did he say to Messier? “Something probably to the effect of like, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here.’ Without him, or without both of them, who knows? I might not have ever woken up. Like I said, I was sleeping until they came.”
Messier: “We’re there celebrating as a team, we’re there celebrating with the fans, we’re there celebrating with the organization, and we’re there celebrating with the Bluver family that their son had received a heart transplant and was with us there to see it. … It was just a powerful experience, and I think one of the reasons why so many people get captured by the ’94 Cup.”
The boy would graduate Oceanside High School on Long Island on time before moving on to the University of Miami, Touro Law School and C.W. Post (MBA). He was appointed chief counsel six months ago at Response Companies, and in January, set the precedent of case law regarding defamation and terminating an attorney (Frechtman v Gutterman). He commutes from Northport on the LIRR. He is single.
“Completely normal life,” Bluver says.
With Bill Bluver battling prostate cancer in Florida, Brian contacted Messier, who of course called the father last November.
“I just needed some words of encouragement for my father,” Brian Bluver said.
“We connect to this day every once in a while, which is just unbelievable,” Messier said.
Brian Bluver will watch Game 4 from home.
“All the Rangers have to do is win one at a time,” he says.
He will be cheering for a miracle comeback … with all his heart.