HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Rangers

[leetch99]

93 years ago today we beat Montreal Maroons 1-0 in our first game...and won the Cup in year two !

Click to read more...

 

[Crease]

Led by Frank Boucher, the Cook brothers, and Ching Johnson.

43 year old defenseman Lester Patrick was born in the 1880s.

 

[HFBS]

Ah yes, I remember it well.

 

[Hi ImHFNYR]

When we win they're the best child.

When they lose they should've been aborted

 

[will1066]

93 years ago today we beat Montreal Maroons 1-0 in our first game...and won the Cup in year two !

We beat the Maroons but not Maroon.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

And it was all down hill from there.

 

[leetch99]

And it was all down hill from there.

LOL...won the division in the first season....must have sold our soul to the devil and then won the Cup next season. Must have been something going to a game back in those days . Lots of smoke and likely some illegal spirits in the cans between intermissions .

 

[Roo Returns]

Can someone sticky the thread on Ching Johnson's Corsi from the 1930 season please?

 

[Crease]

Can someone sticky the thread on Ching Johnson's Corsi from the 1930 season please?

A lot of the All-Time threads got purged in the changeover a few years ago. If that project taught me anything it's that Boucher and Johnson are criminally undercelebrated by the Garden.

Edit: Round 2, Vote 1 (HFNYR Top NYR Defensemen)

 

[nyr2k2]

Not exactly a great 93 years.

For me, at least they're better than the Jets. I think the Mets are probably better.

 

[Megustaelhockey]

Can you imagine how much more popular and relevant hockey could have been in the United States if the Rangers had not been such hot garbage during so much of the league's most formative eras?

 

[NCRanger]

Can you imagine how much more popular and relevant hockey could have been in the United States if the Rangers had not been such hot garbage during so much of the league's most formative eras?

I read somewhere that if the Depression didn't happen, hockey would have been the second most popular professional sport in the United States and it wouldn't have even been close. Games were selling out in every American market in the 1920's, and it was extremely popular. College football was far more popular than the NFL, which was still looked at as a higher level of semi-pro ball. Baseball was far and away the most followed and most popular sport. Basketball had a very niche following.

The Depression hit, and the NHL eventually contracted down to the "Original 6" during World War II. Also WWII decimated NHL rosters even harder than MLB rosters as almost every player was Canadian, and the only way out of service in Canada was some form of physical disability. Wartime hockey was at a pretty bad level. After the war ended, there were 6 teams and the league was led by people who would not expand for almost anything as well as did everything in their power to keep Toronto and Montreal stronger than the four American teams. During this time, the NFL was able to work national TV contracts and become a main part of the American sports scene. The NHL wasn't even a blip on the national radar, even though hockey wasn't totally unpopular and had a following almost anywhere a minor league existed. Outside of the basketball hotbeds, it was still a nothing sport.

The funny thing, even until the late 1970's, the NHL was probably more popular than the NBA. Had true national TV exposure ever happened, the NHL would probably still be more popular nationwide than the NBA. NHL leadership and backward thinking killed it.