Story time! This will get a little bit long. This question was kind of brought up before, so I've just pasted it + couple edits since I last typed it out:
I'm not actually near NY, so me choosing the Rangers didn't really have much to do with the geographical location. So where did it all begin…
Despite having a home team, I never grew up following hockey simply because no one in my family or any of my friends were really interested in it. However, there was one year we made the SCF and it was the craziest experience you could possibly think of; the city was just ALIVE. You had everyone with flags attached to their cars, people hung jerseys/decorations from their window, people had signs in street corners saying "HONK FOR THE TEAM!", and there were countless folks wearing jerseys/t-shirts.
Any ways, my home team ended up losing. It was actually pretty traumatizing...so I said, "SCREW THIS" and I pretty much vowed to never watch hockey again. I still did a little bit, but my home team didn't do so well in the following years and I was like "ergh...can't deal with this", and I pretty much bailed. I think it's tough when there was so much hype from the SCF, y'know? And being a new fan, you don't really understand that the team changes a lot with trades, picks, etc. So after that, the only times I really watched hockey were for the Olympics.
However, during that bout of "I hate hockey" my brother started following the Rangers. I asked him why he didn't follow our home team and all he said was, "Cause they suck". Cool. I also think he just picked them because we have a few relatives over in NY. I ended up watching a few games here and there with him, and for some reason I stuck around a little longer. Plus, I think it's worth mentioning that the Rangers pretty much made the Playoffs every year when I began following them. Thus, their games were always televised and it became a lot easier to watch them. I think their Cup run last year sealed the deal for me, though.
I think one of the biggest reasons why I’ve gravitated towards them so much is, when you watch a team struggle and achieve at a more "moderate pace" (as opposed to jumping right into a crazy Cup run, like I did with my home team), it lets you learn more about the team without getting too caught up with the hype, I guess. Plus, I just really like a lot of the guys on our roster – granted, I guess that could be said about any fan and their respective team!
So yep, I think that’s why I've stuck around with the Rangers. In short, my brother got me into the team.