On the same day the world was rapt as the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase on an L.A. freeway played out on their televisions, the New York Rangers had a joyful procession up the Canyon of Heroes in Lower Manhattan — seen in person by more than a million screaming fans on June 17, 1994.
Then-Journal News hockey reporter Rick Carpiniello captured the scene beautifully in the paper the next morning.
“It was magnificent, shooting gargantuan holes in that old theory that there are 18,200 hockey fans in New York and they go to every game,” Carpiniello wrote. “The official police estimate had the crowd at more than a million people, screaming, dropping tons and tons of paper from windows and rooftops from Battery Park to City Hall, and creating a quake sensation in the shadowy canyon between the skyscrapers.”
“The roar,” Carpiniello continued, “made Madison Square Garden’s game-night din sound like a squeak. The players had their breath stolen. They loved it.”
On one of the floats, Rangers goalie Mike Richter turned to captain Mark Messier and said: “I hope we get a flat tire so we can stay right here.”
“Right here” was somewhere the Rangers and their fans hadn’t been in 54 years: atop the hockey world. Their victory had ended a championship drought that stretched back to before America entered World War II.
But the championship-parched fans forgot any talk of curses as they watched their team hoist Lord Stanley’s goblet.
They chanted: “We got the Cup! We got the Cup!”
And things were sweet in the Canyon of Heroes.
Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Looking back at when the Rangers were Canyon of Heroes champions in 1994
Reporting by Peter D. Kramer, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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