The above photo is surely from the Old Garden, sometime in the '60s before the "New" Garden opened in 1968. It is not credited, but I'd almost bet it accompanied a Roger Angell piece that appeared in The New Yorker. I have a copy of it somewhere, having gone to the library to find the article, then paying some bucks to get a copy of the magazine from E-Bay. I remember reading the article when it came out, probably in a doctor's office, then buying the issue to finish the story. (Vic Hadfield and Jean Ratelle are in the foreground.)
The Rangers were getting good. No longer the perennial doormats of the six-team league that was about to add six more teams. Most teams had one person as the coach and general manager. And why not? What was there to keep track of? When the N.H.L. was six teams it meant there were 120 players in the entire league. How hard was it to keep track of who's who? They certainly weren't getting paid beaucoup bucks.
Reading the obituary I realized how much I lost track of Emile after he was ousted from the Rangers. I forget who owned the Rangers when he was let go, perhaps Gulf and Western. But Emile had put together the best teams that were continuously in the hunt, often advancing in the first playoff round by knocking off the prior year's Stanley Cup Champions.
I distinctly remember the 1970-1971 season when the Rangers lost two home games all season. There were of course ties, no overtime periods and no shootouts. I was a season ticket holder from 1969, lasting 11 lasting seasons.
I was at the game when the goaltender Eddie Giacomin took to the ice as a Detroit Red Wing after the trade engineered by Emile. I don't specifically remember a chant "Kill the Cat," but I do remember the Garden town crowd was raucous throughout the game, booing every time the Rangers touched the puck. At one point, Giacomin almost passed the puck to a Ranger defenseman, Arnie Brown ("hit him with your purse, Arnie'), as he was clearing the puck. Giacomin quickly fell on the puck when he realized what he was doing. Detroit won and everyone was happy about that.
Fans never forgave Francis for trading Giacomin, then Ratelle and Brad Park, even if it did bring a befuddled Phil Esposito to the Rangers. Esposito said at the time that Giacomin should die as a Ranger.
I have a framed blowup of the Daily News photo of Giacomin standing in front of his goal and wiping tears from his face as the anthem is played. It is amazing the difference in goaltender protection between then and now. If Eddie were on roller skates he would look like one of us playing roller hockey on a Sunday morning in a 32nd street school yard.
The high point of Emile's tenure with the Rangers was probably the 1972 Stanley Cup finals against the Bruins. Although the Rangers lost the series 4 games to 2, it almost wasn't even that close. The Bruins had a superior penalty killing lineup of Don Marcotte, Bobby Orr, Eddie Westfall and Derek Sanderson. I swear I still remember the Bruins scoring twice short handed on the same Ranger power play. After the series Francis just said, "Orr killed us."
I remember Emile's migration to the St. Louis Blue front office, but not to the Hartford Whalers. That was so long ago that there are probably people in Hartford who might be reading Emile's obituary surprised to learn Hartford was once an N.H.L. city. (After being a W.H.A. city.) I forgot they became the Carolina Hurricanes. Gordie Howe put Hartford on the W.H.A. map when he joined the Whalers when the league started.
To read the quote from defenseman Harry Howell that Emile brought a bit of a system to the Rangers is interesting. For all the years I watched the Rangers, they always brought the puck up ice with someone first starting behind their goal with the puck and waiting for another forward to come back, circle in front of the net, and run a bit of interference for the puck carrier. It always drove me crazy why they waited to bring the puck back up ice, but that's the way Emile wanted it.
Emile was tough on his players and expected over 100% all the time. When Cesare Maniago was a Ranger goaltender he was emerging as a star. One night at the Old Garden Cesare stopped Bobby Hull from getting his 50th goal of the season, an achievement that would have tied him with Maurice "The Rocket" Richard of Montreal. Leaving the game we as fans were so pumped that we were chanting on West 49th Street, "Hail Cesare, Hail Cesare."
Maniago fell out of favor with Emile when he complained of some ailment and didn't want to play in a game, preferring to sit it out over what Francis thought was a minor ailment. Emile, ever the combative, never complaining goaltender himself, never played Maniago again and traded him. He buried Cesare.
As I keep rereading the obit, and perhaps when someone who was with me at a lot of those games weighs in, I'll have even more to write about Emile and the Rangers.
But for now in my memory, The Cat came back.
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