Founded by impresario Tex Rickard to play in his Madison Square Garden, they quickly put the New York Americans, et al, out of business. A mediocre team for most of its existence, a place where careers went to die - Doug Harvey, Boom-Boom Geoffrion, Phil Esposito... and cash cow Wayne Gretzky. One great non-Gretzkian ex-Ranger is Glen Sather, who, after his career died in New York, became a coach and, later, a top GM. NYR now indulge in hit-and-miss attempts to buy their way out of mediocrity.
Since the original writeup, Sather made a triumphant return to
New York (ticker tape, red-carpeted streets of
Broadway, upon which
vestal virgins led a procession of elephants, including one blue-and-red painted pachyderm bearing Sather himself...), having been installed as the team's new
general manager. And, as I write this, Sather/
NYR have (reportedly, pending the doctors' OK) given away a piece of the future to acquire a piece of the past -- The
(*ahem*) "Next" One,
Eric Lindros -- further cementing the franchise's rep as a place where careers go to die (an aside: some of you may remember the long-ago legal battle between the
Flyers and NYR over the rights to sign the teenaged
Nords draft-dodger Lindros, whose noggin was, arguably, intact at the time; the Fly screwed NYR over then, and they did it again with this new deal). One figures the whole point of this exercise is to sell plenty of
88 jerseys to the
suckers fans out there, taking up the slack of Gretz's retirement slowing the sales of
99 jerseys.