New York Ranger Impressions

Over 18,000 go to Rangers games at Madison Square Garden, and they spend beaucoup bucks to do so. Someone on Twitter who I know has Ranger season tickets in the upper reaches tells me her current playoff ticket price is in the Sutton Place neighborhood of $280! I really doubt there are any retirees who hold season tickets. You've got to making six figures to comfortably afford the games on a seasonal basis.

I don't know what MSG management calls the seats at the very top, but if they call them the mezzanine  seats then the Garden is really abusing the English language.

The Garden no longer prices their seats by colors. In my day of being a season ticket holder there were Red, Orange, Yellow, Green and Blue seats, with Red being the closest to the ice, and the blue being the upper rim. My own season tickets were in the upper row M of the Green seats. Not bad, but still a bit removed from the ice.

The Garden now has the Bridge seats that lets a select view the game from over the ice. No thanks. No idea how the pricing goes these days, but I think the upper rim might be a base price of near $80. It is over 50 years ago, but when I started with my season seats in Section 333 in the late '60s the base price was $5.00. And we thought that was plenty, being in sharp contrast to the $2 and $1.50 balcony prices at the Old Garden.

Am I really watching the Rangers play their 17th! playoff game this season? The Pittsburgh series was so long ago I forget what the coach of the Penguins looked like, and his name. (Mike Sullivan)

No one thought beating Tampa was going to be easy, but with a 2-0 lead in the third game the Rangers looked like they might roll over the Lightning. It didn't happen, as we know.

Power play goals re-energized Tampa, and a goal with less than a minute to go in the third period gave Tampa what amounted to an overtime win at 3-2, to climb back into the series.

Despite being outshot 51-30 for the game, the Rangers looked like they might pull it off and go 3-0 on Tampa in the series—a near death sentence for Tampa. The Rangers were introduced by the ESPN announcer Sean McDonough as the "red-hot Rangers" as they skated out for the start of the game.

Everything is possible once again with Game 4 in Tampa on Tuesday. It would be a shame for Ranger fans not to make the finals and see Mika Zibanejad not get the Conn Smythe trophy for playoff MVP. Mika has owned the right faceoff circle with his one-timer shots at goal, often resulting in his own goal, or assisting on Kreider's.

A new phenomena for me is to hear of "Watch" parties in cities that let the fans watch the televised game outdoors on giant screen TVs. Yesterday's game was a day game, and Central Park Wollman  Skating Rink was the NYC venue for a Watch party. And they were there. A sea of Ranger jerseys applying sun screen. Hard to believe you could actually see something on an outdoor TV, but who really cared if you can watch the game with others and wear your jersey. And despite massively being outshot, the Rangers nearly did win, at Tampa.

What's next? More hockey, and your guess is as good as mine.

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