John Kreiser tells his story of the first Rangers game he ever attended.
This week author-editor-columnist John Kreiser recalls his first Rangers game in exquisite detail.
(Editor’s note: Kreiser has covered the NHL for almost 50 years. He’s written a half-dozen hockey books and been in a Stanley Cup-winning locker room multiple times. But on Jan. 23, 1969, he was just a high school freshman who could hardly wait to see his first Rangers game in person.) Take it away, John:
"I grew up in Yorktown, New York, in northern Westchester County, about 60 miles north of Madison Square Garden. I became a Rangers fan in the early 1960s and spent many a Saturday night battling my folks for control of the television. The Rangers almost always played road games on Saturdays; in those days, the games were usually shown on delayed tape from 9-11 p.m., with Win Elliott at the mic.
"I agonized through a lot of losses until Emile Francis came along and built a winning team. But in terms of going to a game, the Garden might as well have been on the dark side of the moon – my father worked near our home, and we never went into Manhattan.
"That changed in the late 1960s. Dad got a Manhattan job on 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue in 1967, and I won a scholarship to a high school on the Upper East Side in 1968. Once I began commuting to the city five days a week and began pestering Dad to go to a game. Since he had introduced me to hockey and the Rangers, I didn’t have to work too hard.
"Jan. 23, 1969, a Thursday, was the day of my last first-semester final exam and was followed by a long weekend. Coincidentally, the Rangers were hosting the Los Angeles Kings that night. After school let out one day in early January, I navigated my way to the Garden box office where $12 got me three tickets (one of my uncles joined us) in Section 425 – the distant blue seats. At last, I would see the Rangers in person!
"I don’t remember much about the school part of the day, other than that it couldn’t go by fast enough. We all had dinner and were there when the gates opened about an hour before the 7:30 game time. Though I’m not easily impressed, the “new” Garden, which was less than a year old at the time, left me shaking my head in amazement.
"It was awesome! So vast! So full of color (this was when each of the five levels had its own hue: red, orange, yellow, green and blue)! I roared when the Rangers came out for warmups (they wore a darker shade of blue back then), and booed the second-year Kings, who eschewed the conventional road whites in favor of gold sweaters and pants.
"L.A. had beaten the Rangers 3-1 at the “Fabulous Forum” nine days earlier, and the Blueshirts were determined to avoid a repeat. They came out strong and the not-yet-named “GAG Line” dominated whenever it was on the ice. My favorite player, Jean Ratelle, put the home side in front 7:28 into the game; he and Vic Hadfield then set up linemate Rod Gilbert for a shot that beat Kings goalie Gerry Desjardins at 14:26 for a 2-0 lead.
"To say that I was ecstatic would have been the understatement of the night. With a two-goal lead, I was thinking that maybe Eddie Giacomin, my second-favorite Ranger, might be able to notch another shutout (and, if I recall correctly, the $100 bonus that he earned for every “zero” he put up – he wound up leading the league with eight).
"The shutout dream ended when the Kings’ Ed Joyal beat “Fast Eddie” at 5:51 of the second period. But Gilbert got his second of the game, again set up by Hadfield and Ratelle, at 9:01 to make it a two-goal game again. The 3-1 lead lasted through to the second intermission. We were all rooting for Gilbert to score again in the third period – I’m sure I’d have been over the moon to see a Ranger get a hat trick in my first live game.
"Alas, it didn’t happen. Instead, the star of the final 20 minutes was Giacomin, who was at the top of his game during a period that saw his team get outshot 11-2. The 17,250 fans were on the edge of their seats for much of the period, but as it became apparent that the Kings weren’t going to beat Eddie again, we began to relax a bit.
"There were more and more cheers as the clock wound down, with the Rangers locking down the Kings and Giacomin handling anything that got through. I remember going a little nutty when the final buzzer went off. Of course I was delighted with the 3-1 win; the only drawback was that hockey, unlike baseball, doesn’t play doubleheaders.
"We made our way from the 400s (the top level of the Garden) to the lobby and bid farewell to my uncle; my dad and I then headed from Penn Station to Grand Central to take the Penn Central back to Northern Westchester. The trip took about 90 minutes – and thinking back on it now, I feel bad for Dad because he had to listen to me talk about the game for the whole trip home.
"I was over the moon! Watching the Rangers on TV was great – but seeing them win in person was unbelievable. I wasted little time trying to figure out the next time I could get to the Garden (I got there again on the pre-blizzard afternoon of Feb. 8, a 2-0 win against the St. Louis Blues). By the next season, I was a Garden regular.
"I’ve attended hundreds of games at the Garden as a fan since that night 56 years ago, as well as covering hundreds more as a media member (including Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Final, when my dream of seeing the Rangers win it all finally came true). I’ve taken my own sons to their first Rangers games.
"I’ve interviewed stars from multiple eras, from Clint Smith of the 1940 Cup-winning team to Andy Bathgate to Gilbert to Mark Messier to Wayne Gretzky to Henrik Lundqvist. But the memory of that first Rangers game and my initial trip to the Garden has never left me, and I hope it never does!"