Initially, I came prepared through a chat session with a librarian (are you listening, mj?) with the edition of the New Yorker I was going to have to access through microfilm. The chatting librarian and I worked to zero in on the issue, and they gave me an issue date of November 27, 1967 that was when Mr. Angell's piece appeared. They also told me the room to go to was 217.
Well, 217 was not the room to go to. That's the Research room, and while there were two librarians there to help, I was told Room 100 was where to go for microfilm. That's where I remembered going in the past.
Because this was the week of Christmas, there was a thicket of tourists I had to wend my way through. They all seemed to want to stand in front of the lobby Christmas tree and take selfies, or otherwise posed photos. I even saw someone with their girlfriend prowling the hallways on the second floor with a selfie stick. Jesus.
Outside I was happy to see that Patience and Fortitude, the grand stone lions on either side of the stairs, were each adorned with their Christmas wreaths. Several years ago when the building was being cleaned, the wreaths were not there. It was claimed that they trapped water on the lions that could seep into a crack, expand on freezing, and damage the lions. Someone was considering Patience and Fortitude to be wimpy granite lions, unable to withstand a New York winter, despite having done so for decades.
Room 100 was familiar, and I had even kept instructions in my wallet on how to thread the microfilm. But, November 27, 1967 could not be the issue. I came across November 25, and since the New Yorker is a weekly, the 27th could not be right. So much for the helpful chat.
Help was available, and one of the librarians on duty reached behind their head and retrieved a somewhat thick volume holding CD-ROMs of complete New Yorker issues. An index search of 1967 coughed up March 25th! as a date that Mr. Angell filed a piece under 'The Sporting Scene' title.
And there is was, A digital issue on the desktop reserved for The New Yorker CDs. Pulse quickened, as I then watched the librarian send the article to the printer. Yes, I have a Copy Card, also in my wallet. And send it to the printer they did, four times, wrestling with the fact that the desktop wasn't really responding as you might expect when you send something to the print queue.
Several attempts were to get the printer to unleash the article from its cyber grasp. No luck. The librarian was puzzled, since it was claimed this worked in the past. All of course was not lost. Back to microfilm. At least now I had the correct issue date.
Anyone who has ever sat in front of a microfilm reader printer knows this is a beast to work with. I felt like I was in front of a Linotype machine. But, I prevailed in getting print-outs of what of course was a long New Yorker piece. It took some time. I could feel the shadows outside darkening, and my watch wasn't helping me know what time it was. It truly did stop.
So, let me share some of Mr. Angell's poetry in his descriptions of the sights and sounds of a New York Ranger game at the Old Garden.
The rendition of the sound a puck makes as it hits the glass and bounds away--ponk!--is so pitch perfect someone who after reading every book about hockey they could get their hands on, lists it along with other described sounds in a 2014 book, Puckstruck: Distracted, Delighted and Distressed by Canada's Hockey Obsession, by Stephen Smith. It looks like it is well worth checking out by any die-hard fan. I just ordered it.
Mr. Angell's piece is based on following the New York Rangers as they progress through the 1966-67 season in what will be the final hockey season in the Old Garden.
Thus, we get a description of a shot taken by Bob Nevin, the Ranger captain. "...Goyette beat Henri Richard in a face-off to the right of the Montreal nets; the puck flew onto Nevin's stick and vanished into the goal in the same instant, like a scratched pool shot."
Anyone who has played pool knows how fast a scratched pool shot goes. The shot has been made, the object ball sunk, and then as if guided by magnetic forces, the cue ball heads for one of the other 5 pockets and deposits itself safely into the back of the pocket and down into the chute. At least one expletive follows.
Bob Nevin was the right wing of a line centered by Phil Goyette, with Donnie Marshall at left wing. We often referred to them as 'The Dancing Girls." These guys hit no one. And didn't throw their weight around. They kept it to themselves. Together, they probably didn't weigh more than 500 pounds. There were only maybe 5 players, even in the expanded league, who were truly over 200 pounds.
Goyette was the slick playmaker, and they were really the No. 1 line until Ratelle, Gilbert and Hadfield became the GAG line--the goal-a-game trio. They played keep-away with the puck as if it was the pea in a shell game, until someone's wrist flexed, or Gilbert wound up with a slap shot and the goal judge's red light went on as the net twines puffed outward.
Bob Nevin was not a graceful skater. He somewhat wobbled down his wing like a teetering bowling pin that couldn't make up its mind to stay up or fall. But there was one Nevin goal that will stay with me forever.
It was the overtime game against Toronto in the 1970-1971 season, and the Rangers, if they beat Toronto that night in Toronto, would advance to the next round of the playoffs, a feat that hadn't performed in my memory.
The puck was fed to Nevin on a perfect pass, he crossed the Toronto blue line and somehow got off a shot so beautiful and along the ice that it was in the net before you knew it. Of course being an overtime game, it was a sudden death game. The Rangers win, and advance.
Even though I was home alone and it was now maybe 11:00, or later at night, I wanted to celebrate. I promptly went out and got a six pack of beer at the local shot and beer joint, The Murray Hill Cafe, and returned home. I don't remember if I drank all the cans, but I do remember I called in "sick" the next day and spent the afternoon at Aqueduct race track.
As if to keep the hockey moment alive, there were guys at the window who were members of the New Haven Blades, the Ranger farm team. They were wearing their leather sleeved, wool jackets, with American-Canadian hockey patches on the shoulders. They showed more than a few scars on their faces. Guys no older than I was.
Mr. Angell, right at the opening of his piece, establishes his chops for a keen eye when he describes aspects of the Old Garden and its atmosphere: "...the super-fans in the last row of the balcony standing up in their seats and propping themselves against the rafters with their hands..."
Absolutely true. As mentioned in the prior posting, the Old Garden was built with boxing sightlines. Expand to a hockey rink, and even the second row of the side balcony starts to offer an obstructed view. Go all the way to the top, and well, there's no one behind you, and few directly in front of you most of the time. Although there are assigned seats with a $1.50 side balcony ticket, it's really General Admission. Thus, I would sit behind my high school friend who had an enviable Row A seat.
The real noise makers took to the last row and did literally hold onto the ceiling to keep from teetering forward. These were the leather-lunged, leather jacket crowd who would blow "Charge" on their bugles trying to get the Rangers to show some life. Sometimes they did.
The New Garden didn't have a "balcony." At least they wouldn't call it that. They called it a Mezzanine. Seats at the New Garden were color coded: Red were those closest to the ice, followed upward by Orange, Yellow and Green seats. I had two season seats for 11 years in Row M of the Green Seats, and eventually the Yellow seats on a turn.
The upper reaches were the Blue Seats. The Green seats were $5.00 then, so I imagine the Blue seats were somewhat cheaper. But the columnless design of the New Garden created a bowl, so everyone was really further way from the ice than before.
But the Blue seats were inhabited by the old side balcony crowd, paying just a little more to be able to toss toilet paper onto the ice. It did take more effort. But what the New Garden offered was the ability to hang banners from the Mezzanine from the front, concrete rim that wouldn't hang too low to bock anyone's view from below. And banners people hung. There was some girl who was always professing her love for one of the Rangers. In the early 70s, when the Rangers and the Bruins were such rivals, I arrived early to the game, went up to the Blue seat rim and hung a bed sheet that was spray painted: CREAM BOSTON'S PIE.
Johnny McKenzie, a right wing on the John Bucyk, Fred Stanfield line was a pug-faced, squat, pain-in-ass who was very aggressive. I think he competed in rodeos as well. His nickname was Pie. Years and years later I had a boss who was a season ticket holder who went to Ranger games with his brother during the same time I did. I mentioned the banner to him. He remembered seeing it.
Did anyone ever go to a hockey game that didn't have fights? The older style of play, the back-to-back scheduling and frequency of seeing the same stick-wielding mug, and the somewhat lenient penalty assessment system, all helped to propagate fights. The saying was: "I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out."
Mr. Angell acutely describes the scene when a fight inevitably broke out. "...almost every game erupts at least once into a brisk fistfight, when the ice suddenly resembles the environs of a bombed glove factory..."
The main even combatants would always drop their stick and throw their gloves down and start to throw punches generally in the direction of each other's head, with the goal being to get the other player's jersey pulled over their head so their arms would be tied up, It was like one of those old gangster movies where the thug pulls someone's suit jacket down to tie up one's arms and then starts to throw punches at a defenseless opponent.
There were no helmets worn by any players then, so the head and face were far less protected than they are today. And it was never just two guys fighting, the rest of the players would pair off and generally waltz around the ice, keeping each other from throwing any punches. They were the sideshow. So, with all the sticks and gloves on the ice, it did look like a bombed glove factory. The clothing-drop bin in the parking lot had exploded.
Generally, no one fought with their sticks. That was fairly taboo, but it did happen. Mean Teddy Green, a defenseman for the Bruins was a stick-swinger who was often suspended for it. He did inflict some serious damage.
The most violent stick-swinging occurred when Boston's Dave Forbes skated directly at Minnesota's Henry Boucha and butt-ended him in the eye. A serious injury resulted with Boucha's vision becoming severely compromised. Within two years he had to retire at 25.
The Minnesota DA, Gary Flakne, pressed assault charges after a grand jury indictment, with a trial ending in a hung jury. There was no retrial. It was perhaps the first time something that happened in a professional sport became a criminal matter. There was huge controversy over it.
Years later Flakne would tell people, "friends of mine still get on me about it. They say I'm the only prosecuting attorney in history to have 15,000 witnesses to an assault and not wind up with a conviction." He did at least get nine of the twelve jurors to vote for a conviction.
Occasionally, the benches emptied, with even the goaltenders skating toward each other with half-hearted malice. Games could take a while to play, as all the equipment had to be picked up, penalties decided, and order hopefully restored.
The game, while the fastest of games, could grind on with pettiness. When the puck was being dug out of the corners, opposing players would grapple with the player trying to free the puck. This often lead to players pressing against the boards, moving the puck slowly with their skates until the linesman decided there was enough non-action and whistled for a face-off.
A look at any photo or video of a game from the 60s and 70s, with the players with no helmets, wearing sweaters really, with a thin layer of shoulder pads underneath, is a sharp contract to the equipment-laden players of today.
I have a photo from the New York Daily News of Eddie Giacomin on the night he came back to the Garden as a Detroit Red Wing. It was not a popular trade, and the fans let the Rangers know it. I was at the game and every time the Rangers touched the puck, they were booed. The place never really quieted down. Detroit was cheered whenever they had the puck, and won the game, to everyone's delight. Everyone was disgusted that Giacomin had been traded.
What makes the photo so iconic is that it shows Giacomin, facing his net at the start of the game while the anthem is being played, and visibly trying to wipe the tears from his eyes. He's almost bawling. At one point in the game he made a save, looked up, and almost shoveled a pass to a Ranger.
Being an isolated image, it is easy to realize how little protection the goaltenders had, even with their mask, which really only covered their face. It didn't protect the other parts of the head. The pads looked like puffy cardboard taped to their shins. The rest of their body was not very bulky with padding. Packages from Amazon come better protected these days.
But the game is obviously still being played, perhaps more skillfully than ever, with the removal of the center red line inhibiting two line passes. The wings play on their off side, and the puck is passed around as if directed with a laser, almost always landing on the right stick.
Fighting still happens, but the penalties are more severe, and hands can be hurt from pounding on a helmet. There is less of the corner delays in moving the puck, and the action can often be so sustained that even the broadcaster Doc Emrick might need an oxygen tank nearby to restore his breath after some end-to-end-to-end-action.
The New Garden has just been renovated after a two year project. I've yet to go there for a hockey game, but my daughter Susan did treat me to a Bob Seger concert last December. Being a working girl trying to save enough money to buy a house, she got what were really "nosebleed" tickets in what I think is called the Upper Bowl, or something like that.
With the sound system and sharp image video screens, close tickets for a concert are not necessarily required to enjoy the show. I remember looking up, and I really could touch a ceiling support beam that was probably holding up the recently added catwalk, with seating, that they constructed over the arena.
I must admit, I didn't immediately think of the Old Garden and the bugle boys and the lousy sightlines. But after all, they only ripped the old place down. They didn't cart the memories away.
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