New York Rangers: Adam Graves with the game winner in January 1994
It’s the 25 year anniversary of the New York Rangers Stanley Cup victory. In the spirit, we are flashing back to a January win over the Panthers.
It’s officially 2019 and that marks a landmark anniversary for the New York Rangers. 25 years ago, the year was 1994. Any Rangers fan knows that was a special year. Mark Messier and company delivered the Stanley Cup that fans had been yearning for since 1940.
In celebrating that season, we are going to flash back to games along the way to the playoffs, as well as the playoff run itself. This is the first of our publications on Flashback Friday.
There was no game on January 4 that year, but there was a game on January 3, so let’s head back there right now.
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It was a Monday night at the great Madison Square Garden. The Florida Panthers were in town to face the Rangers.
Two former teammates were set to meet each other in goal as Mike Richter started for New York, taking on John Vanbiesbrouck.
In the first period, the two teams exchanged power play goals. The Rangers struck first when Jeff Beukeboom scored at the 8:13 mark, assisted by Mike Gartner and Tony Amonte.
The Panthers put in the equalizer at 12:10 when Scott Mellanby scored an unassisted goal to mark his 14th on the season.
Most of us like a good hockey fight, right? The team, and most others, don’t have any good muscle these days.
The days of the enforcer are over. Joey Kocur was one of the old school enforcers, and he got in one of his battles at the 14:49 mark with Paul Laus. Take a look:
The two teams traded goals again in the second period. First was Mike Hough, putting his third in behind Richter with assists by Brian Skrudland and Brian Benning 5:03 into the period.
After going back and forth for ten minutes, the aforementioned Joey Kocur scored his second on assists by Ed Olczyk and Sergei Zubov. This was 15:16 into the second period before they headed to the locker room tied at two goals each.
dark. Next. The problem for the Rangers never changes
Then came period number three. The one goal was scored by the great Adam Graves just 43 seconds in. On the power play, he scored his 26th with assists by Steve Larmer and Brian Leetch which turned out to be the game-winner.
On the night, Vanbiesbrouck was fantastic in defeat, stopping 51 out of 54 shots. Richter was just a bit better, stopping 25 out of 27 to earn the narrow victory, the Rangers 27th against only nine losses.
Graves was on his way to his one and only 50 goal season. It was just another great night along the way to a special season.