FAMILY MATTERS
Rangers enjoying run with ones who mean the most
Tanner Glass is currently staying in a Manhattan hotel while his wife and two young sons remain in Connecticut, where Glass played the majority of the season for AHL Hartford, the Rangers’ minor league affiliate. Because of that, he needed to FaceTime with his oldest, 3-year-old Sawyer, the morning before Game 3 of the second-round series against the Senators last week. And Sawyer had a message.
“He’s like, ‘Dad, kick some butt, keep your stick on the ice, and throw me a puck,’ ” Glass told The Post, a wide, toothy smile breaking across his bearded face. “Makes all that hard work and sacrifice worth it to see those three this time of year.”
In all of the trying moments that define an NHL (or AHL) regular season and postseason, there are also moments like that. With so many young families among the Rangers’ players, to look along the glass during pregame warmups at the Garden is to see a pseudo day-care class.
Glass’ wife, Emily, is strapped with the task of not only bringing Sawyer — who Glass says “can’t sit still,” to no one’s surprise if you’ve ever seen him play — but also 3-month-old Hayden. She did the same up in Montreal for the first round, when she eventually met Glass’ parents, who are from Regina, Saskatchewan.
“It’s pretty cool,” the 33year-old Glass said. “Supermom — she deserves the credit for that.”
The Rangers are under immense pressure, with a must-win Game 6 against the Senators on Tuesday, down in the best-of-seven series, 3-2. One more loss, and their season is over.
But hockey is quickly put into perspective when these glimpses of family are brought into relief. Backup goalie Antti Raanta could hardly contain himself in Game 4 warm-ups when he saw his 3-month-old daughter, Evelyn, pressed up against the glass with his wife, Anna. It was the first game for his first child, and the 27-year-old Finn was ecstatic.
“It was kind of surreal feeling,” Raanta said. “I think she didn’t have any idea where she was, but she was just enjoying when the guys in blue jerseys are going like quickly all over the place, then I start going. It was just a great feeling.”
So great, Raanta could hardly focus on the task at hand — something he kidded about with starter Henrik Lundqvist, who is just about as focused as any player in the league during warm-ups.
“I was talking to Hank about it, and kind of like I had so much energy from that I was going all over the place in warm-ups. Couldn’t even make any saves,” Raanta said. “But I was just super-happy. It’s a surreal feeling when you see the baby there.”
This Rangers team has changed immensely over the past few years, a mass exodus for so many players from living the single life in Manhattan to living the family life up in the leafy suburbs of Westchester, much closer to their practice facil- ity in Tarrytown. Coming down for the games are the young and budding families of home-grown Rangers like Dan Girardi and Marc Staal, and the game-day staff takes care of them so they can be seen during warm-ups — if that’s what the player wants.
“They tell me where they’re going to go so I don’t have to be like, ‘ Where are they?’ ” Glass said. “The guys at the rink take care of them, so I can just go by and give them a [fist] pound, then keep going.”
There are complications in the surroundings of these players’ lives, like Glass becoming an unreasonably divisive figure among vocal Rangers fans on social media, along with his pending unrestricted free agency this summer. Raanta had another terrific season and might be attractive to the Vegas Golden Knights in the June expansion draft.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember they are people, too, with families and lives away from the rink. Like when Raanta told his wife the NHL tweeted a picture of the family from before Game 4.
“She was like, ‘Oh my god, how am I looking?’ ” Raanta said, laughing. “I’m like, ‘Don’t worry, you look good.’ It’s really fun. I think she needs to come to all the games when we’re winning.”