The Rangers have had a couple players that should be in the Hall Of Fame.
Anger, despair and frustration.
That sums up the feelings of mostly-older Rangers fans who are distinctly unhappy with he Hockey Hall of Fame and its inexplicable machinations.
Likewise hockey historians like Your's Truly cannot explain why two of the most distinguished Rangers of the distant past have not been voted into the hallowed Puck Pantheon in Toronto.
Superior left wing Dean Prentice and sparkling goalkeeper Lorne Chabot are the players in question.
The Maven watched Prentice, the Rangers, for years and I know Chabot quite well from reading a ton of books in which he was gloriously mentioned.
Speaking of books, author-historian Kris Kullas wrote a compelling volume about the Hall of Fame and those worthy stickhandlers left out in the cold.
It's called "Access Denied – Forgotten And Future Heroes Of Hockey's Hall of Fame." Author Kullas examined the evidence and made an airtight case for Prentice.
"Dean played a total of twenty-two seasons in the NHL," Kullas asserted. "And eleven of them with the Rangers. He was a great backchecker, penalty killer, power play specialist and all-round hustler. Many called him the most underrated player of his era."
I can vouch for that, having watched Dean throughout his Rangers whole career. He was part of the 1951 Guelph Biltmores Memorial Cup-winners which included Hall of Famers Andy Bathgate and Harry Howell who all graduated to the NHL.
Take it from me, Bathgate wouldn't be in the HOF had Prentice not been the workhorse on left wing digging the puck out of the corners and sending crisp passes to Handy Andy who piled up the goals.
"Here are more reasons why Dean is Hall of Fame quality," added Kullas. "He played 1,378 regular season NHL and 54 playoff games. He was a coach's dream – the quintessential complete hockey player filling many roles on five NHL teams.
"Dean came from the Original Six era of tough, hard-nosed hockey and ended his career as a role model for the younger players."
Prentice played almost five years for frenetic Rangers coach Phil Watson – a martinet among martinets. Never in all that time did I hear Philery Phil utter a discouraging word about Deano the Dynamo.
Lorne Chabot is another story but a Hall of Fame-worthy one as well.
When Conn Smythe was assembling the first Rangers squad in 1926, Chabot was one of his first selections and it was a superior one.
Kullas: "In his rookie season with the Rangers, Chabot won 22 games out of 36 contests, winning twenty-two, losing only nine and tying five. In addition he posted ten shutouts and allowed only 1.56 goals per game. In his second season (1927-28) he helped the Rangers to the Stanley Cup Final."
A severe eye injury hospitalized Lorne, sidelining him for the rest of the Final round while replacement Joe Miller led the Blueshirts to their first Cup.
Manager Lester Patrick mistakenly believed that the eye injury would impair Chabot's ability and let Lorne go. But The Silver Fox was wrong; dead wrong.
Chabot won a Cup for Toronto in 1932, played eleven full NHL seasons with a lifetime goals against average of 2.02 and – get a load of this – 71 shutouts.
"That," concluded Kullas. "translated into a shutout every sixth game!"
And you're gonna tell me these guys are not Hall of Fame worthy?
It's about time the august Hall of Fame in never-a-Stanley Cup Toronto gives both the respective reputations of Prentice and Chabot a break.
A BIG BREAK!
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