The Maven saw his first hockey game at Madison Square Garden at the age of seven in 1939, but it was not my first Rangers contest.
In those years, the Rangers had a farm team in the Eastern Amateur Hockey League called the New York Rovers. They played every Sunday afternoon at the old Garden on Eighth Avenue between West 49th and West 50th Street.
Every Sunday, it was a double-header. For only a half a buck you could see a Met League game that started at 1:30 p.m. and then the Rovers at 3:30 p.m. It was exciting and fun hockey – but it wasn’t the NHL.
In those days the Rangers games didn’t start until 8:30 p.m. Since I had to get up relatively early to got to school at P.S. 54, the next day, my parents felt that the Rangers games were off-limits. “Too late!” said Dad.
Finally, in November 1942, I launched a personal campaign to have Dad take me to a Rangers game and, finally, he relented and also agreed that one of my friends, Gerald Sussman, could go with us.
The other problem was that it was raining hard that day and, for some reason, Dad thought a rainy night was equated with not taking us to a game.
To this day, I cannot recall what changed his mind but at about 5 p.m. he said yes and two hours later Dad, Gerald Sussman and Yours Truly were on the subway headed to the Garden.
The cheapest seats – for $1.25 – were in the side balcony – you had to climb
endless stairs to get there – which had a viewing defect.
If you weren’t sitting in the first two rows, it was impossible to see the near side boards and about ten feet away from the boards.
Essentially to understand what was going on you had to “fake it,” – guess what the crowd noise was all about.
The Rangers were playing the Chicago Black Hawks that night and since World War II had been involving America for more than a year – Canada since 1939 – many of the stars had gone into the armed forces.
Of course, we couldn’t have cared less; just being at a genuine NHL game was thrill enough for us; nor did we mind that we couldn’t see action along the near side boards.
As for the game itself, the Rangers still featured players who had starred for the Stanley Cup-winners of 1940. Phil Watson, Alf Pike, Bryan Hextall were still there but also plenty of newcomers.
The later-to-be-legendary rookie Steve Buzinski was in goal for one of his precious few victories. Buzinski was the puck-stopper who was so bad, he later earned the nickname, “Steve Buzinski The Puck Goes Insky.”.
Like the Rangers, Chicago had a patchwork lineup but we couldn’t have cared less. This was a genuine NHL game and the Blueshirts went on to win it, 5-3.
That 1942-43 season turned out to be a Rangers disaster and it got worse a season later and a season after that – and that.
It didn’t matter much to me as I was quite happy going to every single Sunday afternoon double-header until March 1946 when Dad took me to see the Maple Leafs and Rangers play a 6-6 tie.
A year later I was a regular in the END balcony where you could see all the action.
P.S. When I retired from MSG Networks, the Rangers awarded me the official report of that original Ranger game of mine. It’s a classic – handwritten. (That’s why I think the official scorer wrote the date down as November 12, 1942.)
You get the point; it was a night to remember!
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