If character is what we do when no one is watching, the Rangers’ character has been defined with thousands of people in arenas and hundreds of thousands at home watching the team reel off winning streaks first of seven games and now five within their past 14 matches.
But tonight, as the Blueshirts seek to extend their overall streak to six straight and their Garden streak to eight in a row when the Maple Leafs come to town, it won’t only be the fans watching, but the omnipresent cameras of HBO, too.
And while the club’s foundation appears solid enough to at least withstand the intrusion of the cameras and network people that will be granted access to otherwise walled-off, player-only restricted areas (and there are dozens of those around a John Tortorella-coached team) for the four-part “24/7” series leading into and through the Jan. 2 Winter Classic in Philadelphia, this will introduce a new dynamic into the mix for the next month.
It’s not so much that sensitive information or embarrassing encounters will be revealed to the public, because the Rangers, Flyers and the NHL retain some sort of veto power over the final product.
It’s that the cameras won’t truly be recording reality as much as recording a reality at least partially distorted by their very presence.
The young, hungry and personable Rangers do appear ready for their close-up, but it is impossible to know whether the chemistry within the room will be altered even slightly by the introduction of outside agents into the mix.
It is impossible to know whether the needling, interaction and peer-to-peer criticism that occurs when no one is watching will change if the whole world has the chance to watch; impossible to know whether any individual will play to the cameras or whether any individual will shrink from them.
It is as well impossible to know whether Tortorella, who is a calculated personality even as he appears to be a spontaneously combustible one, will alter his message-delivery in his practice, pregame and intermission meetings with the team.
At the same time, however, the television series will present the opportunity for this group of self-effacing, low-key and likeable young men to thrive in the spotlight, just as they have thrived in the aftermath of the pre-season trek through Europe that was followed almost immediately by a trip through Western Canada.
And it will give this team an idea of the type of spotlight it would face if it can make it to June, a prospect that is not unthinkable.
Cameras can distort reality. But they can also illuminate character.
The Road to the Winter Classic begins tonight. It is the Rangers’ responsibility to ensure HBO does not present a fork in the season that thus far has been on the straight and narrow.