Credit to /u/thrillmatic
To suggest that the Rangers aren't the greatest sports organization of all time throughout history to a Rangers fan is analogous to something that falls between inquisition-era blasphemy and trying to convince someone from Chicago that deep dish isn't the best kind of pizza. Regardless of all the statistics, regardless of all the losing seasons, regardless of the lack of banners that pepper the rafters of the Garden, Rangers fans are convinced at a wholesale level that every other team is irrelevant, and hockey would be nothing without the Rangers, because New York, because original six. Any type of rational discussion about hockey meets a hard stop with but we play at Madison Square Garden, the greatest stadium of all time, ever, which quickly devolves into an incoherent rambling of which only a few pieces of something remotely resembling English can be distilled: something something, 1994, something something, original six.
Have any of you ever been to Madison Square Garden? Excuse me, I mean The World Famous Madison Square Garden Brought to you by Chase Manhattan Bank, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan. It SUCKS. Really, it's not a good arena—it has history, but not enough history to eradicate the image etched into my brain of the 3 homeless guys I saw jerking off on the E line when I was on my way there. The halls are cramped and the seats aren't comfortable, but they do have TVs strategically positioned around the seating for convenient viewing, you know, in case I want to watch the fucking telecast while I'm at the live game after paying $245 for mezzanine level seats. But that's unfair of me—tickets are only $220 during games vs. the Western Conference.
There are two types of experiences you'll have at MSG: the high brow, and the low brow. The low brow is experienced if you're wearing a jersey of an opposing team (especially a rival): you'll inevitably be heckled by some out-of-work 23 year old wearing a Brian Leetch sweater over Keystone Light stained cargo shorts, trying his damnedest to get his drunk, vacant, unintelligent eyes to focus on you for more than 3 seconds as he shovles a $16 NATHANS MSG WORLD FAMOUS hot dog into his mouth. I'm liberally applying the term 'heckle' there, by the way, because as I mentioned earlier, what comes out of the collective mouths of Rangers fans is closer to the vocal fumblings of early hominid cro magnons. The other experience, the high brow experience, is you pay $2000 to sit next to an investment banker who keeps checking his phone for Wimbeldon highlights. Don't make eye contact with him, pleb. You're a nobody.
The Freudian-level cognitive dissonance is structural; the television station that plays Rangers (and Devils, and Islanders) games is called MSG, and every April we experience the same rolling tradition: the Rangers are knocked out of the playoffs, Al Trautwig, Ron Dugauy and Bill Pidto find a way to deflect their disappointment and utter disbelief that THE New York Rangers didn't win the cup again by attributing it to some extra-hockey force, like the refs, or bad ice, or "bad puck luck," and quickly drown their emotions in a circlejerk of how great the 1994 team was as a pre-amble to the inevitable telecast of ROAD TO THE CUP: 1994. Something, something, this is Hugh Jessiman's fault.
The worst part of all of it is the most hardcore Rangers fans I've encountered are kids who've moved from the midwest and adopted the Rags as their team to offset the embarrassment of only being able to afford an apartment in Crown Heights in their desperate attempt to convince their friends from home that they're living the New York experience. Fuck off, and go back to Madison, WI.
The New York Rangers have been around since the dawn of time, yet have only managed to eek out 4 cups, 3 of which came during an era where there were only 5 other teams. The Islanders eclipsed that in four years; the Devils, the less attractive cousin from the sleazier side of the family, have managed 3 in just over 30 years. And we played in Continental Airlines Arena.