Biased fan here, but also have more distinct memories of that entire season than any other season I've watched since, so I can also give you a good analysis of the team.
Here's how good the Rangers were in 94: we traded Vanbiesbrouck (who had an all-time great season for Florida, topped only by Hasek who also had an all-timer that year), then later in the season traded Gartner and Amonte for players not nearly as productive, and Mark Messier had a down offensive regular season...
...and we still won the President's Trophy and the Cup.
We can talk about the insane lineup depth during an era where most teams were just one or two lines deep, the veteran experience coupled with dynamic young players, or the excellent goalie tandem.
But what separated the 94 Rangers from the entire rest of the league, was the fact that our top defensive pairings were without peer not only in 94, but pretty much the rest of the 90s. The top two pairs had three Hall of Fame d-men, along with one of the biggest, toughest crease clearing d-men of his era.
Leetch-Beukeboom
Zubov-Lowe
Karpovtsev-Wells
Lidster
Every single one of those 7 defensemen were a top pairing d-man at some point in their careers. Then consider we traded another former top pairing d-man, James Patrick, and carried a young Mattias Norstrom, to understand what type of depth the d pairings had.
Leetch was only a season removed from 102 pts, the last d-man to score over 100 pts until Karlsson last year. And on the 2nd pairing, Zubov had 89 points and had a really good shot to reach 100 pts had he not missed 6 games.
The powerplay was simply electric. Number 1 in the league that year and was a huge boon for us in the playoffs.
Zubov's production slipped in the playoffs but Leetch scored at a 100 point pace and won the Conn Smythe.
Messier's production also jumped massively in the postseason. Kovalev's too.
Lastly, prior to the trade deadline, these were our wing forwards:
Kovalev
Graves
Amonte
Gartner
Larmer
Tikkanen
Every single one of those players besides maybe Tikkanen has a Hall of Fame case (Gartner's already in). 4 of the 6 finished their career with over 400 goals, and Graves (50+ goals that season) came close. 3 of the 6 had been Selke finalists or Top 5 Selke voting at some point, with Tikkanen being a multi time Selke finalist.
5 of the 6 have been all-stars.
That's three lines worth of star forwards, in an era where that type of depth simply wasn't a thing. Hell, find me a team NOW with this type of forward depth. We're talking about a very small group of teams, ever, who had 6 impact forwards like this. Other teams had two or three 50 goal/100 pt forwards that might stand out more to you, but the Rangers had 6 really good, all star level/or Selke worthy dudes. We traded TWO OF THEM later in the year and still won the Cup!
Biggest weakness of the team was at Center. After Messier, it was a good group of guys like Nemchinov and eventually MacTavish, but no one dominant. At times, Kovalev had to play Center.
Overall, not many teams all time could match the forward depth, d-corps depth, or goaltending depth of the 94 Rangers, to say nothing of the sheer Stanley Cup Playoff experience.
This team gets overlooked because flashier, longer lasting teams preceded and followed them, but I take the 94 Rangers over either of the 91 or 92 Penguins, the 93 Canadiens, the 90 Oilers (lesser version of the 94 Rangers), 95 Devils, or the 99 Stars. Only teams I think were better in that decade were the 96 Avs and the back to back Red Wings.
On paper there was no team in the decade as good as the Penguins, but that same team got bounced in the 94 playoffs, beat by the 93 Islanders, and went down 0-2 in the semi-finals against the 92 Rangers which were vastly inferior to the 94 Rangers. The 96 Penguins, with Jagr at the height of his powers, were arguably better than any other Pens team and the Panthers beat them. I'm just not as impressed with those Pens teams and think they started to lose once the conference got tougher. I take the 94 Rangers over them pretty easily.
Removing the 80s Islanders, 80s Oilers, 90s Avs and 90s Red Wings, I think there's a good case to be made that the Rangers were the best of the non-multi cup teams of their era.
Now here's a better question:
How good COULD the Rangers have been over a longer stretch had we not traded Amonte and Gartner for Matteau, Anderson and Noonan, never traded Doug Weight for Esa Tikkanen, and traded Richter instead of Vanbiesbrouck? Highly possible that the Rangers win or come close in 95 and 96 with that squad.
