One of the problems with all these nostalgia threads is there may be a poster or two here who actually saw some Rangers teams back in the 50's and maybe a half dozen or so who remember from the 60's and then 15 or 20 go back into the 70's. So how do we really go about appreciating even the Cook brothers, Frank Boucher, Ching Johnson let alone Earl Seibert, Babe Siebert, Art Coulter, Neil Colville, Lynn Patrick, Chuck Rayner, Buddy O'Connor, Edgar Laprade, Babe Pratt, Clint Smith etc. These are all guys who spent significant parts of their careers with the Rangers and ended up in the Hall of Fame. And if we're going to include guys like Bure, Gretzky, Harvey, Dionne, Lafleur whose better part of their careers were spent with other teams well there's also Howie Morenz, Doug and Max Bentley, Bill Gadsby, Boom Boom Geoffrion, Tim Horton and Jacques Plante. Just saying. I mean Howie Morenz only played briefly with us but he was kind of the Brett Hull, Alex Ovechkin of his day.
The Rangers team that won the cup in 1940 was a team on the verge of seriously contending for multiple Cups. All that hit the skids with WWII. Most of that team served in the military during the war. Red Garrett was killed. That couldn't be said for some other teams and the Rangers went from what could have been a powerhouse into pretty much a farce during the war years. A lot of those players returned at the conclusion of the war but most of them had lost something at that point.
Anyway I started following the Rangers in the early 70's and this is another thing. The difference between how the game was played in the early 70's and how it was played in the 1990's is massive and the differences are massive again from the 1990's to today. So it would also have been massive from the 1920's to Bobby Orr's time. It's kind of the same game but there are also significant differences in equipment, coaching, rules/officiating, training, skill levels, size/physical play/$ or remuneration from era to era. The greater influence of the European skating/skill game today for instance has kind of pushed a lot of the physical goon happy concussion inducing North American game of the late 90's into the background. Shit happens and things will evolve whether we like it or not.
