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Postgame ritual melds Rangers with fans

By Max J. Dickstein, amNewYork Sports Editor | mdickstein@am-ny.com

April 18, 2008

It happens after every Rangers home win.

The ritual occurred most recently after the Rangers' 5-3 defeat of the Devils on Wednesday night, and it seems likely to occur again this postseason with the Blueshirts ahead 3-1 in their best-of-seven, first-round series.

The Rangers will attempt to eliminate the rival Devils in Game 5 Friday night at the Prudential Center.

This is the ritual: Momentum propels the entire Rangers team back into the center of Madison Square Garden's rink after a victory. Their brows are beaded with cool sweat. Their legs and feet, buried inside their equipment, are wearied from one hard-skated shift after another.

The Rangers and their fans are about to reward each other's efforts with an emotional ceremony.

Anticipation builds as the skaters make their slow rivulets on the ice. One Ranger's hockey stick rises, held in one hand, as others follow. In time, on its feet, the crowd cries approval, swirls towels, claps vigorously, opens hands, takes photos, pumps fists.

Some Rangers smile and clench their jaws, as if they were humble servants who had only done the bidding of their ticket-buying lords.

The spiny bed of raised hockey sticks affects the crowd like an arsenal of fireplace pokers, stoking the cheers to a thunderous crescendo.

The Rangers begin to return their sticks iceward. On each occasion, as the fans' roars subside and the skaters glide nimbly to their locker room in the belly of the Garden, it seems that the bond between the team and its fans is stronger than ever.

"We raise sticks when we win a game at home to salute the best fans in all of hockey," Sammy Steinlight, the Rangers' director of public relations, wrote in an e-mail message Thursday, adding that the practice began after the lost lockout season of 2004-05. "It is unique to the NHL. It is the players thanking the Blueshirt Faithful."

Hockey, perhaps more than any other sport, translates poorly to television -- Rangers home-ice hockey in particular.

One has to be present at the Garden, amid the crackle of sticks, the pounding of pads and the crispness of the rink-chilled air, to appreciate the connection between the Rangers and their fans.