On this day in New York · June 14, 1994
The Rangers Finally Win the Cup
Fifty-four years of waiting ended on Garden ice in one Tuesday-night Game 7, and a city that had stopped believing let itself believe again.
The facts
- Final score
- Rangers 3, Canucks 2 in Game 7
- Location
- Madison Square Garden, New York City
- Date
- June 14, 1994
- Series MVP
- Brian Leetch, New York Rangers
On June 14, 1994, the New York Rangers beat the Vancouver Canucks 3 to 2 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final at Madison Square Garden, closing out a series they had led three games to one before Vancouver clawed back to force a decider. Brian Leetch scored in the first period and was named the series MVP; Mark Messier, the captain the Rangers had traded for to end exactly this kind of drought, was credited with the go-ahead goal in the second. It was the franchise's first championship since 1940, a stretch so long that fans had turned the wait itself into a running joke and a curse. When the final horn sounded, the Garden crowd did not just cheer, it exhaled.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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This one will last a lifetime!
Sam Rosen, MSG Networks play-by-play announcer, calling the final horn of Game 7 on June 14, 1994
Source: amNewYork
Why it still matters
The 1940 drought had become shorthand for New York sports futility, repeated by broadcasters and rival fans alike every spring the Rangers came up short. Breaking it turned Messier, Leetch, and Mike Richter into permanent Garden royalty and gave a generation of New Yorkers their first taste of a title that had outlasted their parents.
Sources
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