Make MSG central Park
It's well past time for Blueshirts to honor original blueline No. 2
NEXT Sunday could have been the day. The Rangers and Bruins play a night game at the Garden after their respective alumni teams meet in the afternoon. So it could have been the day. And it still should.
But instead of Oct. 27 representing the date on which Brad Park’s No. 2 will be hoisted to MSG’s spoked ceiling to join his epochal peers Rod Gilbert, Ed Giacomin, Jean Ratelle and Vic Hadfield, it now becomes the date on which the Rangers should announce they are bestowing that honor on one of the two best defensemen in franchise history.
Park and Brian Leetch, a pair of twos who form a royal Blueshirt blueline flush. Leetch’s number, of course, was retired long ago. Now it is time for Park. It is about time. It is past time. There is one argument and one argument only against bestowing the franchise’s ultimate honor on Park, and that is the relatively limited number of games he played for the team. Fact is, the defenseman played just 465 games for the Rangers, which was 36 fewer than he played for the Bruins.
But Boston has enough, already. Boston doesn’t get to claim Park, who is pictured in his Bruins No. 22 uniform on his official NHL.com page, a throw-up-in-the-mouthworthy image if there ever was one. New York does. New York should.
At their respective peaks, there was little to separate Park and Leetch. Both were dynamic puck carriers. Both were elite on the power play. Leetch may have been stronger in the defensive zone. Park was the meaner player. Leetch won a pair of Norris Trophies. Park finished second in the balloting four times as
a Ranger, runner-up each time to Bobby Orr.
Park is also the only post-Original Six Ranger to make the NHL first All-Star team three times and one of five players in franchise history — joining Bill Cook, Frank Boucher, Bryan Hextall, Sr. and Bill Gadsby — to earn that recognition.
Again, yes, he played just 465 games for the Rangers. Leetch played 1,129. Ed Giacomin’s 539 games played represents the fewest among the 10 Rangers whose numbers are memorialized on Broadway, But you’d have you be a party-pooper to deny Park the recognition based on that.
That, or you never saw him play or don’t understand what Park means within the franchise legacy.
It is not Park’s fault Emile Francis traded him and Ratelle (with Joe Zanussi) to the Bruins for Phil Esposito and Carol Vadnais on Nov. 7, 1975. It is not ours, either. A generation of fans turns its lonely eyes to the spoked ceiling and wonders what happened to that second No. 2.
In the years before Francis came to the rescue, there were Andy Bathgate and Harry Howell, and their numbers have been retired. From the 1994 Cup champs, there were Leetch, Mark Messier, Mike Richter and Adam Graves, and all their numbers are retired. And from Emile’s Era, there were Giacomin, Park, Gilbert, Ratelle and Hadfield, and all but Park have had their numbers retired. There is a vacancy at the top of the building.
And on Sunday, the Rangers should announce that it will be filled this same time next year.
Idiotic NHL scheduling, Take Two: While the Lightning, Sharks, Wild and Panthers each play just four home games in October, the Maple Leafs and Predators are playing nine and the Blackhawks, Penguins and Golden Knights eight apiece.
So a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon the inaccuracy of NHL recorded shot locations when naturalstattrick.com listed the Rangers’ high-danger chances at zero in Ottawa on Oct. 5 for the game in which Mika Zibanejad got the gimme from just outside the crease on that tic-tac-toe offensive-zone exchange featuring No. 93, Pavel Buchnevich and Artemi Panarin.
The official sheet, however, listed it as a 20-foot shot. I presumed it was human error by the off-ice official designated with the task of recording shots, not representative of a league-wide malfunction that infected the NHL’s system for the first week-plus of the season and has skewed all early-season analytical calculations.
Zibanejad, too, was baffled when brought to his attention.
“Twenty feet?” he asked, apparently rhetorically. “What does that mean?” “Exactly,” I responded. “No,” said the Swede. “I don’t know feet as a measurement. How many meters is that?” When you start naming the elite of the NHL, you’d be making a rather significant mistake by omitting Leon Draisaitl.
Taylor Hall, against the Rangers on Thursday, provided a fierce reminder of why he won the Hart two years ago and why he will be able to name his price either in New Jersey or on the open market.
And why, if the Devils cannot get him to sign an extension, the contender that acquires him as a deadline rental will become the favorite to win the Stanley Cup.
If everyone in the Rangers organization were doing his or her job as well as Brendan Smith has done his essentially from the first day of training camp, the Blueshirts would be a playoff lock.
Maybe no one could have foreseen a 1-6 start for the Wild, but this is a team in a similar position to the one the Rangers were in a couple of years ago, a team clearly in need of a do-over.
But does ownership acknowledge that, and if so, wouldn’t it have been better to move on from Jared Spurgeon, 30 next month, rather than granting the defenseman a seven-year extension worth $7.75 million per that kicks in next year?
And in Dallas, Jim Montgomery seemed a little smarter last season.
Finally, the impulsive nature of the 2015 draft-day move in which Glen Sather — in his last trade before stepping up into the Rangers’ presidency exclusively and naming Jeff Gorton general manager — sent Carl Hagelin to the Ducks for Emerson Etem and the 41st-overall selection of the draft made no more sense at the time than it did a few days ago when it was announced that the Rangers had suspended Ryan Gropp (that 41st selection) for failing to report to the Eastern League.