Rangers cherishing chance to create their own 1994-like legacy
NY Post
There is hockey and there are the Rangers. They are preceded around these parts by only the Yankees and Giants. In two years it will be a century. They are a legacy team. But that’s part of the issue, isn’t it?
The legacy every Rangers team inherits is 1994, the way that Rangers teams leading up to that exception to the rule inherited the legacy of 1940.
The legacy can become a burden. The weight of all those seasons gone wrong can crush teams. It took 54 years last time. It is at 30 now.
But what I have learned, and learned again this week, is that the 2023-24 Rangers do not feel weighed down by franchise history. They are not running away from the narrative. Indeed, they are cherishing the opportunity to party like 1994. They want to stand side by side with the team that is etched in the city’s fabric for all time.
Mark Messier was loud about the mission when he arrived from Edmonton in 1991. This team’s captain, Jacob Trouba, keeps it more quiet. But in the flush of his team’s emotional Game 6 victory in Carolina on Thursday, you could hear echoes, maybe faint ones but nevertheless, of No. 11 coming out of No. 8’s mouth.
“Everyone is aware of history, but I think you can say the same thing about the last team that won the Stanley Cup here, I think there was a bit of a drought,” Trouba told The Post in Raleigh, N.C., after Chris Kreider’s all-time third period. “They took it on and they won.
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