Rangers goalie Ed Giacomin set to block a shot by the Bruins' Johnny Bucyk (9) during a 1970 opening-round series at Madison Square Garden. Boston won the title.
By JEFF Z. KLEIN and PETER MAY
Published: May 14, 2013
Yankees vs. Red Sox, Giants vs. Patriots, Knicks vs. Celtics. Postseason clashes among those teams in recent years have poured fuel on the New York-Boston rivalry.
Associated Press
Two years later, Bucyk held the cup aloft again after the Bruins won it at the Garden.
But it has been 40 years since the Rangers and the Bruins met in a playoff series, and passions have cooled on what was once the bitterest sports rivalry between the cities, one that provoked fistfights on the ice and created the need for police escorts.
"Any time we played Boston, it was like a war," said Emile Francis, known as the Cat, who coached the Rangers between 1965 and 1975. "We played 14 times every year, and by halfway through the year, we couldn't stand each other. Some of those playoff games took about five hours to play — it was one brawl after another."
The Rangers and the Bruins, among the Original Six N.H.L. teams, have met nine times in the playoffs, starting in the Rangers' first season, 1926-27. The Rangers won three series, in 1928, 1940 and in 1973, which was also the last time the teams played each other in the postseason.
Fans of a certain age remember the battles of the early 1970s, when the big, bad, high-scoring Bruins of Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito, Johnny Bucyk, Derek Sanderson and Gerry Cheevers would square off against the more finesse-based Rangers of Rod Gilbert, Brad Park, Jean Ratelle, Vic Hadfield and Ed Giacomin.
The Bruins beat the Rangers en route to the Stanley Cup in 1970 and again in '72, when the teams met in the finals. The Rangers were in the middle of their 54-year Cup drought.
"We didn't like the Rangers — hated them, really," said Sanderson, a shaggy-haired bad boy for those Bruins teams. "We thought they were complainers, whiners. We'd tell them, 'Quit whining, play the game.' Hadfield was a whiner. Giacomin was a whiner."
In the last game of the '72 finals, Sanderson picked a fight with Gilbert.
"Rod is a good guy and a good friend, but I didn't know him that well back then," said Sanderson, 66. "So there were maybe two or three minutes left in a close game when Donnie Marcotte got called for a penalty. I knew Gilbert would be leading the power play, so I jumped him and got him tossed out with me — there was no instigator rule back then. They didn't score on the power play, and we ended up winning."
Gilbert said: "He attacked me in the corner from behind. I said to him, 'That's not fair — that's not how you win the game fairly.' He did the right thing, but I wasn't too pleased with that."
The atmosphere was pretty rough in the stands, too. Francis, 86, remembered what it was like at the old Boston Garden for the 1973 quarterfinal series.
"There's a knock on the door just before it was time to go," Francis said. "Two cops come out and said, 'We're going to take you to the bench.' I said, 'I don't need anybody taking me to the bench.' They said, 'We'd rather play it safe and take you to the bench.'
"The whole way from the dressing room to the bench, you'd hear the language. I get to the bench, I happen to look up at the clock and right there was a big bedsheet, and it said, 'Kill the Cat.' After the game the reporters asked me what I thought of the sign, and I said: 'I don't stop the puck, and I don't put the puck in the net — why'd they want to bother to kill me?' "
The series returned to Madison Square Garden, where the fans hung a huge sign that used vulgarities to refer to Sanderson. "I said, 'Get that sign down, because we're going on national TV,' " Francis remembered.
The memories, and the animosity, go back a long way — long before the 1970s.
"People always assumed that it was Montreal that we didn't like, but there was no love lost for the Rangers," said Milt Schmidt, 95, a Bruins great in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. "We had some great battles with them in those times. Instead of scoring goals, we were in fights all the time."
Schmidt was there in 1939 for the N.H.L.'s first best-of-seven series, when the top-seeded Bruins played the No. 2 Rangers. Boston won the first three games, two in overtime on goals from forward Mel Hill. But the Rangers won the next three.
Game 7 at the Boston Garden was tied, 1-1, after 60 minutes. It took 48 minutes of overtime before Hill ended it again, a record third overtime goal.
Schmidt remembered Hill scoring, but, typically of a Rangers-Bruins series, he recalled something else.
"Art Coulter started to square off with me," Schmidt said. "He was much bigger than me, and I wasn't much of a fighter. We started shoving each other, and then he dropped his gloves. I stepped on one of them and fell flat on my backside. The picture in the paper next day made it look as though he had just flattened me."
Divisional setups and the luck of the draw have kept the Rangers and the Bruins apart in the postseason since 1973, and the rivalry was defused for decades to come by the 1975 and 1976 trades that moved the once-hated Esposito, Ken Hodge and Carol Vadnais to New York, and Ratelle and Park to Boston.
But starting Thursday, a new batch of hatreds will start brewing. Schmidt said that he watched the Bruins' remarkable comeback against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night, and that he would be watching as Boston takes on the Rangers. So will Gilbert and Francis, and so will Sanderson.
"Hockey has been waiting for a series like this," Sanderson said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/sports/hockey/rangers-and-bruins-renew-a-longtime-playoff-rivalry.html?ref=sports&_r=0--
Jay
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