Sunday night at the Garden will feature a long-overdue celebration of one of the Rangers’ and the NHL’s greatest players, Jean Ratelle’s No. 19 being raised to the rafters 33 years after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
It will also be an evening of two star-crossed eras in franchise history coming together, periods in which the Rangers reached a Stanley Cup Final and were very, very good but just couldn’t get over the hump.
The current Rangers’ rebuilding process as it moves on from its close-but-no-cigar past several seasons provides an intriguing backdrop to Sunday’s festivities, with balls in the air that could lead to a trade at any moment.
A trade — The Trade — ended Ratelle’s tenure on Broadway on Nov. 7, 1975, sent him to Boston where he’d appear in two more Cup Finals following the one he came back for in 1972 against those Bruins after a broken ankle ended his ’71-72 regular season with 109 points in 63 games. Ratelle hoped that season he and the center’s GAG Line teammates, Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield, who will be on hand Sunday, would all score 50 goals that season; Hadfield did while Ratelle (46) and Gilbert (43) fell short.
Ratelle, beloved for his class and elegance as much as his talent, is second in franchise history with 336 goals, third all-time with 817 assists and sixth in games played at 862. He’ll be the ninth Ranger to have his number retired, joining his longtime friend Gilbert, Eddie Giacomin, Mike Richter, Mark Messier, Brian Leetch, Adam Graves, Andy Bathgate and Harry Howell.
Ryan McDonagh greets Rangers great Jean Ratelle, who is second in scoring in Blueshirt history, at the 2017 All-Star game.
(Andrew D. Bernstein/NHLI via Getty Images)That list of names was mentioned last season during a Rangers television broadcast watched by Ratelle and his wife Nancy, who told Jean the Rangers should retire his number. Ratelle says he never had a bad relationship with the Rangers, but a since-improved back issue, which made carrying even a jug of milk difficult, prevented him from traveling. He did, however, feel some loyalty to the Bruins after working for them across 26 years as a player, assistant coach and scout.
Nancy said it’d been so long since he was with Boston that he didn’t owe loyalty anymore, and so Jean agreed if his former teammate and Rangers president Glen Sather called him regarding having his number retired, he’d say yes. Which he did last year after being named one of the NHL’s 100 greatest players, wearing his blue No. 19 Rangers jersey during All-Star weekend in Los Angeles. No one will ever wear the No. 19 Blueshirt again, Jesper Fast giving it up for No. 17 before this season began.
This is a pivotal moment for the Rangers as they try to reshape their team to better compete for a Stanley Cup in the future, while current players have been enveloped by uncertainty for weeks waiting for Monday’s trade deadline to pass. At the very least, Sunday’s celebration of Ratelle will provide players and fans a brief respite from the club’s current malaise, and all will witness Ratelle finally getting his due.