The Day The Earth Stood Still

On This Date In History:

Thirteen years ago today, I had one of the best days of my life. It was our annual Golf Day at the bank, meaning that Vicki and I - and most of the rest of the company - spent the afternoon on a golf course, rather than sitting at our desks. Dinner was held in a big hall, where all of the golfers from our neck of the woods came together for food and fun. The entertainment was provided by a well-known hypnotist, and I was one of the volunteers to go up on-stage and have my brain screwed around with. While most of what "mentalist Mike Mandel" did to us seemed to have little or no effect on me, a little bit of it actually seemed to "work." And something else special happened that night. What was it again? Oh, that's right:

The New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup!

I suspect I have too biased a viewpoint to ever really know how big a deal that playoff year, series and Game 7 really were to the rest of the hockey faithful, but they seem to still get talked about in sports circles, more than a dozen years later. Here are some of the reasons why I think it was a magic time, regardless of who you were rooting for, or against:

1) For the second time in three years, the Rangers finished 1st overall. However, when they did it 1992, their playoff run came to a screeching halt in the second round, when Mario, Jaromir and the rest of the Penguins knocked them out on the way to their second consecutive championship. So the 1993/94 President's Trophy was a return to the top, but also a reminder of how badly things had gone the last time.

2) In the opening round, the Rangers drew their hated rivals, the New York Islanders. Because of their 1st place finish in the NHL that year, the Rangers were favourites to finally end their 54-year Cup drought, but the pesky Islanders were licking their lips at the thought of being in a position to bring it all crashing down around their cross-town foes' ears. Despite the hype, though, the Rangers methodically dismantled that Islander group, winning the first 2 games at home by identical 6-0 scores. In fact, they scored the first 15 goals in the series, and outscored their opponents 22-3 by the time they'd swept them under the rug. It was one of the most lopsided series results of all time. And it seemed fitting that their Cup run required them to travel through Long Island.

3) The 2nd round match-up, against the Washington Capitals, was the only one of the four series that really had nothing to hang a hat on. The New York team quickly got up 3-0 in the series, having posted a 7-0 run by that point, before losing focus for one game en route to their first playoff loss. They rebounded the next game, and closed the Capitals out in five.

4) A much tougher opponent awaited the Rangers in Round Three. Finishing 2nd in the regular season, just six points behind New York, were the New Jersey Devils. Ironically, the team had played six times that season, with the Rangers winning every context. Devils fans were quick to point out that, had the two teams split those games, it would've been New Jersey finishing 1st, with New York six points back. Fortunately it didn't go that way, and the Rangers held the home ice advantage in the playoff series. With the Rangers down 3 games to 2 and heading back to New Jersey, Rangers captain Mark Messier boldly promised that "there will be a Game 7." The media had a feeding frenzy with that, bringing comparisons to Joe Namath and others, and drawing most of the attention onto Messier himself. As captain, he knew his team needed a lift, and so he figuratively piled them all up on his shoulders and carried them into Game 6. In the game, the Rangers were trailing 2-0 in the second period, when Messier sent line mate Alexi Kovalev in on Brodeur, to break the shutout. When the teams came out in the 3rd period, you could tell the Rangers were fired up. Before the game was over, Messier had completed the natural hat trick, scoring 3 times, including into an empty net, to win the game 4-2 and force the Game 7 he'd promised.

5) Game 7 featured stellar goaltending at both ends, and ushered in the final minute of the third period with the hometown Rangers up 1-0. In a scene that was burned into my memory cells, the Rangers iced the puck late in the period, forcing a face-off deep in their own end, which resulted in Jersey netting the tying goal with 7.7 seconds left on the clock! With that crushing blow, I figured their pursuit of the Cup would be over, and as one overtime period stretched to a second, my hopes continued to flag. And then, on a play that seemed as innocuous as it would prove historic, recent addition Stephane Matheau circled around the back of Brodeur's net, came out on the far side and tucked it in behind the Jersey goaltender to end one of the greatest, and most exciting series in years! The fact that the Devils had finished 2nd in the regular season and would win the Cup the following year, indicates just how good a team that was. And the Rangers were finally past them!

6) The Stanley Cup Finals between the Rangers and Vancouver were filled with twists and turns, including some controversial calls (and non-calls) in the early games, but after blowing two chances to win the Cup - Game 5 at MSG, and Game 6 at GM Place - the Rangers had one last shot, playing Game 7 at home, for all the marbles. This just happened to be scheduled for Tuesday, June 14th, 1994... the same date as our Golf Day and dinner!

I got to see from about the midway point of that game on, after leaving the Golf dinner early. It was 2-1 Rangers in the 2nd when I got my first glimpse of it. The fact that the game stayed close all the way through, and went into the dying moments of the third period with the Rangers holding a precarious 3-2 lead, just adds a little more to the lore. There was the Vancouver shot that beat Mike Richter but blessedly dinged off the post and out, and several other late scoring chances for the Canucks. And sure enough, the Rangers iced the puck very late in the period, forcing one last face-off in front of Richter. How could any Rangers fan not expect history to repeat itself, after the adventure of Game 7 in the previous series? But luck was with the better team this time around, and the puck was drawn into the corner as the clock counted down, and New York City celebrated the end of a string of futility that had, until that night, stretched all the way forward from 1940. As the sign read somewhere in the crowd at MSG: "Now I can die happy!"

This was unquestionably a high point in my life, and the culmination of - at that point - two decades of watching the Rangers do everything but win a championship. It is, after all, half of the reason that my online alias is Kimota94!

And by the way: for quite awhile after that day - and possibly, to some degree, still to this day - I suspected that maybe I'd simply been hypnotized to believe the Rangers won that game! After all, if I'd asked for, and received, a post-hypnotic suggestion that said, "Regardless of the outcome of tonight's game, whenever you see or hear anything related to it, you'll interpret the words and pictures as meaning your team won it all..." how would I ever know the difference? I mean, really?