The Stanley Cup stands 35 ¹/₄ inches tall, but in the eyes of the Rangers now, it may as well tower over the Empire State Building. It is made of silver and nickel alloy, and it may as well be 24-karat gold. It weighs 34 ¹/₂ pounds, and it may as well be as heavy as a refrigerator, but they will find a way to hoist it because it is every little boy’s hockey obsession. The Holy Grail of their dreams.
As the Rangers reunited on the ice Sunday morning, not yet knowing whether they would begin scratching their 20-year itch Wednesday night in Chicago or Los Angeles, they couldn’t help but still hear the impassioned sounds of New York pleading, “We Want the Cup.”
And guess what: The Rangers Want the Cup more than anyone, or anything.
“I don’t think anyone in the locker room wants it any less than the fans. … We want the Cup, too,” Mats Zucarello told The Post, “so we should probably have sung with them.”
They all have these Cup dreams as little boys, Zuccarello and Henrik Lundqvist and Chris Kreider and Ryan McDonagh and Dan Girardi and Derek Stepan, every last one of them. Brad Richards and Martin St. Louis continue to share what it was like holding the most hallowed prize in sports, hoisting it, handing it to a teammate, taking it back home with them, 10 years after their dreams came true with the Lightning.
“It’s a surreal feeling, because it happens not so quick in the sense of the journey, but it’s so quick when you’re on the ice getting it,” Richards told The Post. “You grab it, and you skate around, and then you pass it. … It’s the greatest moment ever and you’ll do it 100 other times in the locker room and all that, but the one on the ice, it happened so quick, it’s just a flash. But it’s the biggest rush of adrenaline.
“And the thing feels like it’s half an ounce … because you’re just so fired up.
“But I will say if I ever get another chance to do it, I might have it in my hands a lot longer, that initial lift, ’cause I didn’t like keep it and cherish it as long as I should have, but that’s just the way we were. We were so excited to give it to each other, it just happens like that. But it’s amazing.”
Richards was 24 years old then. St. Louis was 28.
“It’s a feeling of fulfillment, you know?” St. Louis told The Post. “It’s one of those that’s on everybody’s checklist. You get to check the box. It’s pretty cool.”
I asked St. Louis who handed the Cup to him. He paused and said, “I think Richie [Richards] gave it to me.”
Richards remembers it differently. “Marty handed it to me,” Richards said. “I handed it to Freddy Modin. That’s the thing — we were so excited to give it to the other guy, we all forgot to maybe enjoy it a little more.”
Each member of the championship team gets to spend at least 24 hours with the Cup.
“I had two days with it, actually,” Richards said. “I took it home to Prince Edward Island. Had a public parade day, for the town and the island, a lot of people showed up — there was 20,000 people in a little town of 500. … It was crazy. So we had a parade through my little village, and then my private day, we took it out on the boats, my dad’s fishing boats, probably had 45, 50 people over, close friends. … Jet skiing and barbecuing on the water, and then had like a live band private thing at my rink where I grew up playing that night.”
St. Louis cherished his private time with the Cup.
“Just had a family party,” St. Louis said, “and enjoyed every minute with it.”
The great Lundqvist, as much as anyone, deserves a moment like that. A once-in-a-lifetime moment if you are lucky. A twice-in-a-lifetime opportunity now in the Cup finals for Richards and St. Louis, a decade after their once-in-a-lifetime moment.
“Before the playoffs, they shared their experience how it is, and I think everyone wants to have that feeling they had when they hoisted that Cup,” Zuccarello said.
Alain Vigneault, who lost Game 7 in the Stanley Cup finals three years ago with the Canucks, welcomed his Rangers back from a two-day break with a hard practice.
“Everybody individually trying to pick the pace up and push each other to practice as hard as we have all year because that pace in Game 1 is going to be higher than anything we’ve seen,” Richards said.
The Rangers leave after practice Monday to chase their Cup dreams beginning Wednesday night.
“We haven’t won anything yet,” Derick Brassard said. “We had fun after the [Montreal] game the other night, but we’re back to be on a mission again.”
Mission We Want the Cup, Too.