“This is the stuff of which sports history is made. Personally, for [Mark Messier], and for the New York Rangers, if indeed this is to be their year, it’s the kind of thing that makes you believe that destiny is really there on your bench.”
—Gary Thorne, ESPN play-by-play analyst
While the Devils were in their locker room, contemplating how to keep things all together, maintain their slim lead, and finish what they set out to do, the Rangers were across the hall, experiencing what some players saw as a changing of the guard. It was one that may have been happening slowly over time.
“I think back to Game 4, to be honest, in New Jersey, when the incidents came, and Mike [Keenan] sat some guys, and Mark [Messier] had his meeting the next day with us,” said Doug Lidster, who by now was set for a ton of playing time with Brian Leetch in the third period and would be a key factor in those following, critical 20 minutes. “My impression was that it was no longer Mike’s team at that point. It really did slip over to be Mark’s team at that time. Mike got us to where we were supposed to be. Absolutely. But then the ship moved on to Mark. From Game 4 on, we had lost the momentum. I don’t remember anything being said. I don’t remember any speech from Mike. I do remember, after the second period, we were down 2–1 then, and I remember Mike walking around, patting everyone on the back.
“To me, that went over like a lead balloon. ‘This was not the Mike Keenan that I know,’ I kept saying to myself. I don’t remember anything specific that Mike said. I suppose, though, there was nothing to be said. If that was part of his method, so be it. If he said something, I never heard it.”
An interesting strategy, for sure, considering the most important period of the year was about to begin. But if this truly was Messier’s team, everyone was about to find out how it would fare.
“There was a lot of positive talk among the guys. That goal, [Alexei] Kovalev, was the best situation for us,” Stephane Matteau said. “‘You cannot give up.’ ‘You cannot get down.’ ‘You have to keep it up.’ Things like that among the players in the room. And with this group, we were confident that we could come back. We knew that we’d all come together and do everything in our power to get it done. And it was strange at times, it was quiet in there for a bit, but really, no one was nervous even though our season could have ended right there.”
If the Devils needed a branch to cling to as this third period of Game 6 began amid a persistent buzz from both sets of fans at the Swamp, they only had to remind themselves that when leading in the playoffs after two periods, New Jersey was 8–1. When trailing after two frames in the postseason, New York was 0–3.
“Anytime a team scores a goal at the end of the period, the momentum changes. And that happened, and then you get a breather and a chance to collect yourself, and that momentum gave them a lot of energy,” Tom Chorske said. “We knew we’d be in for a battle. It was just two teams with a lot of will going head to head. But yes, you could sense that the momentum was in their favor. And even though we led, we had our work cut out for us.”
But it just didn’t feel like New Jersey was winning anymore.
“Everybody in the building sensed the momentum, it truly was surreal,” Chris Russo said. “Here the Devils were, at home, leading 2–1 headed into the third period, and they should have felt confident. But it wasn’t that way at all! It was one of those periods where you were just waiting for Messier to do something special, especially after The Guarantee. It was a terrific atmosphere.”
The Devils even opened the period on a carryover power play, but that still didn’t matter.
“The Devils were just shell-shocked,” said the Post’s Larry Brooks. “It was that simple.”
Less than a minute into the period, with the Devils still a man up, Messier, already armed with an assist, began his assault for the ages. Instead of a harmless, yet productive, dump into the Devils’ zone that would have allowed the Rangers’ penalty killers to set up, Messier took a chance on the attack and carried the puck past the blue line. With a few feet of wiggle room, he let a wrist shot go from the right circle that Scott Stevens blocked in front of Martin Brodeur. However, the rebound was kicked right back out to Messier, who carried it around the back of the net and attempted to stuff a wraparound past the goal line not long after the net barely slid off its moorings.
In today’s day and age, it was the kind of play that would have drawn a lengthy review. But in 1994, the play was whistled because the net was dislodged, as Stevens and Brodeur slid together back into the right post, knocking the net off its moorings just as Messier was about to slide the puck around the left post.
It was a break for New Jersey, clearly. But it was also a harbinger of things to come. Messier was on the attack, and the Devils were sliding, literally.
“Wow,” Gary Thorne said. “The net came loose because of the Devils. And the Rangers had nothing to do with it.”
Whether he meant to do it or not, it was a smart move by Stevens. The block from a prone position was a terrific hockey move, and letting the net slip away from its normal position, forcing a stoppage, was far better than getting up and trying to stop Messier, who was five feet away with momentum. That wasn’t going to happen.
But no matter—the Rangers just kept pushing. New York ably killed off the power play, and in many instances, the Rangers looked like they were the team with the man advantage. The Devils had just seven seconds of attack time during the minor, and finished with no shots.
How’s that for a change of pace?
Plus, Keenan had modified his lines, and a new line of Messier, Kovalev, and Adam Graves debuted five minutes after New York’s timeout. Glenn Anderson, remember, took the ice with Graves and Messier right when the timeout concluded. But that shift was a complete disaster, and Chorske almost ended the game. But at 10:12 of the second, with a faceoff just inside the Devils’ zone, Kovalev joined the top-line mix, and things changed. All three had their legs on this night, two of them had points in the second period, and together they seemed intent on breaking through New Jersey’s trap with speed and skill.
“I think it was pretty simple from Mike’s perspective at that point,” the Post’s Jay Greenberg said. “Put your best players together, get them out there, and see what they can do.”
Fresh off that penalty kill, Kovalev and Messier were back at it again, and this time the net would stay put. With a strong push out of their own zone, Leetch hit Kovalev in the neutral zone cleanly, and he carried in. From the left point, Kovalev shoved a flat pass over to a breaking Messier, as the Devils scrambled to get into position, with Bruce Driver and Ken Daneyko on defense. A mere second before the two defensemen caught up to the rush and swarmed him, Messier flipped a backhand shot to Brodeur’s stick side that would become one of the more famous highlights in NHL history. Messier’s shot fooled Brodeur, sneaked through to the net on the left side, and popped back out. Brodeur, hoping it had never made it to the net, caught the puck with his glove and held on, looking back as if he’d had it all along.
Too late.
Messier had tied the game, and as he swept along the boards with his hands held straight up in another famous pose with a grin as wide as the margin of play over the last five minutes of game action, his teammates mobbed him. At 2:48 of the third period, in a game once dominated by the Devils with the Rangers on the brink of elimination, it was now 2–2, and the sentiment was summed up by veteran New Jersey play-by-play man Mike Emrick’s simple television call on SportsChannel: “The man who promised victory has just tied the game.”
Messier’s 95th career playoff goal, from Leetch and Kovalev, once again inspired the Rangers’ portion of the crowd to cheer at a volume previously never heard before in East Rutherford.
“There were more Rangers fans than Devils fans,” Claude Lemieux said. “That’s the way it was. For us, that was very tough.”
Overpowered by the Devils for the better part of the previous eight periods, the Rangers washed all that away in less than an hour’s time.
“Once the Rangers tied it,” Brooks said, “it was just a matter of time. The game was over.”
Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” blared over the loudspeakers, as the arena staff tried feverishly to drown out the Rangers fans, who by now had completely taken over. Perhaps it was a fitting musical selection; after all, consider the first line of the song: “Get your motor runnin’.”
Well, Messier’s was runnin’ alright. The only question was, when would it stop?
At the 16:23 mark of the third, he had won 17 of his 23 faceoffs. What’s more, he had played 16:23, with 21 shifts, two shots, and two points. His best was yet to come.
“[The Devils] changed, for sure, in the third period,” Leetch said. “They didn’t forecheck as much and allowed us more room. We took advantage of that.”
In the first five minutes of the third period, the Rangers had already fired seven shots on Brodeur. The Devils, meanwhile, managed just one quality chance in that time frame—a wrist shot by Driver off a feed from John MacLean—but Mike Richter made a sliding save that he held on to.
The frenetic pace calmed a bit once the game was tied, as—for a change—the contest began to resemble a traditional playoff game, where both teams focused on line changes, not making mistakes, and waiting for the right opportunities to attack.
At 11:32, though, the Rangers caught a break as a 4-on-4 opportunity resulted from matching roughing penalties to Scott Niedermayer and Esa Tikkanen. The benefit was two-fold for New York, and that would prove fruitful. First, 4-on-4s favored the speed and skill of the Rangers, who could do more with the ensuing open ice. Second, while Tikkanen was a valued member of this postseason run, the one-for-one tradeoff with Tikkanen and Niedermayer, the Devils’ most skilled offensive defenseman, was no contest. Advantage, New York.
While the Devils did not attack and elected to bide their time on the 4-on-4, a sloppy clear once again proved costly. Bobby Carpenter, one of the Devils’ most consistent defensive forwards, got a little lazy on his dump-in from center ice that, like Bill Guerin’s from the second period, should have been deposited well behind Richter, allowing for New Jersey to set up with time on its side. Instead, the puck slid only 20 feet off Carpenter’s stick and right onto the blade of Kovalev, who turned at his own blue line and raced toward history again.
Kovalev passed to Leetch at center, and the defenseman then carried it into the Devils’ zone. Leetch then turned toward the bench but left a backhand pass for Kovalaev’s stick at the top of the left faceoff circle. Kovalev, again making the most of the room he’d been given, let a slap shot go that Brodeur stopped but kicked out to the right side.
“Rebounds can kill you sometimes. You have to control those rebounds,” said Kelly Hrudey, who, from his post as a CBC analyst in 2011, was part of a McDonald’s advertising campaign in Canada that charted the greatest moments in hockey history. In one of the commercials, he was in a McDonald’s restaurant arguing with former NHL forward P.J. Stock over the memorable list, all while endorsing The Guarantee as his choice.
Well, this rebound broke free, as if sent down by the hockey gods. And who was at Brodeur’s doorstep to bury it from two feet out? Messier. At 12:12 of the third period, Messier’s second goal and third point of the night gave the Rangers their first lead at 3–2.
“There are signature games in a player’s career, and signature games for a team on its way to a Stanley Cup championship,” said Peter McNab, a former Devils center and Emrick’s partner, at the time, on SportsChannel. “We are looking at one of those for Messier, and for the New York Rangers.”
“Listen, the Rangers were better than the Bruins and Sabres, and it showed right away. But we had them,” said Messier’s longtime friend Ken Daneyko, noting New Jersey’s first two postseason opponents that season. “I’ve known Mess a long time, and we go back a ways, and I just know him deep down inside. Trust me. And when I saw him down 2–0 in Game 6, I saw him demoralized. He looked done. And then Kovalev gets that late goal in the second period, and the rest is history. We had to close the door on a great team like that and a great player like Mark. We didn’t do it. And we paid for it.”
As Brodeur looked up to the rafters, the New York celebratory hug drifted behind the net, centered, of course, around Messier. The captain’s permasmile had returned once again as his teammates tapped him on the helmet. The first one there was Leetch; Kovalev came in next. Messier and Leetch at one point were almost close enough to have kissed each other, as the Rangers’ portion of the crowd erupted again.
It was a different story over in Row 12, just to the left of Brodeur. A dejected Melanie had her feet on the top of the chair in front of her, with her head resting in the white pom-pom she had been waving for more than an hour earlier in the night. She slowly crept out of her cover to see a celebration in front of her, decked out in red, white, and blue. Denis, with a frown on, could only sit and watch as well, as his son picked himself back up and got his bearings about him.
“The third goal was a similar thing, where one of our forwards decided to drift over and help one of our defensemen out, when he really didn’t need the help, and it left a guy open,” Driver said. “And then? Boom, in the net. I look at those two blatant mistakes, you just feel that lost opportunity. Again, it’s easy to say now. But we did have them.”
The Rangers bench, meanwhile, was simply electric as Messier arrived, and all he kept yelling was the same call that Matteau used earlier in the series, in the same building: “Woooooooooooooooo!”
“There is no greater theater in sports, and Mark Messier is writing the stuff of which legends are made,” Thorne said. “Coming out publicly, saying, ‘We will win’ Game 6, and now, he has scored two goals in this game.”
And his teammates were going along for the ride. In fact, seven minutes into the third period, the Rangers—over the course of the last 20:00 of game action—had outshot the Devils 19–8. At this point, it was all about Messier and what the Rangers were about to accomplish. It appeared as if the Devils’ dominant defensive mind-set—where a one-goal lead in the third period meant a surefire win—was actually working in reverse, and it was the Rangers who were playing with that confidence cushion.
“We were finally playing up to our abilities,” Matteau said. “We had the best, deepest team, we had four skilled lines, and that’s something you don’t see in this league all that often. When we were going, it was tough to defend us. And we were going there. But really, it went back to the timeout, and eventually when Mike put Mess, Graves, and Kovalev on the same line. To see them do what they did, it was unbelievable. And I had the best seat in the house.”
And the house truly belonged to the Rangers by now. A poster-board sign held by a New York fan behind the penalty boxes told the story succinctly, by way of a Sharpie: “Welcome to the (Second) Home of the Rangers.”
But the Devils did show a little fight as the clock ticked down, and in a tight period where more players got away with potential minors than usual, longtime referee Kerry Fraser eventually flagged Anderson for a two-minute slashing penalty on Bernie Nicholls at 17:11. The Devils suddenly had some life. All it took was one goal to send the game to overtime.
Determined not to get cheated, Jacques Lemaire—after a stoppage in play in which the ensuing faceoff was going to be to Richter’s right—called a timeout with 1:53 left. In a game where timeouts became a major storyline, Lemaire organized his troops and pulled Brodeur from the net, creating a 6-on-4 opportunity. The break, clearly, was needed: at the time of the decision, the Devils had been outshot 25–9 in the previous 31:30.
“But I just remember thinking to myself,” Brooks said, “This was too early to pull him.”
The move certainly was debatable. But Lemaire had faith in his power-play unit, and must have believed that as long as the Devils won the faceoff, with six skaters on the ice, they should be able to sustain play in the New York zone.
Well, they lost the faceoff. And to who, of all people? Messier, who beat Nicholls. The rest, as they say, is history.
In a classic sweep through the faceoff dot, Messier backpassed it to Lidster, who was in the right corner. Lidster collected the puck and calmly shoved it around the boards behind Richter. With the extra skater, though, the Devils were able to swarm, and MacLean intercepted the pass and offered up a blind centering pass to Lemieux from behind the net, probably one that he had made 1,000 times before.
Easy enough, right?
But Lemieux was tied up by Leetch, an underrated play by the defenseman that clearly prevented a potential tap-in for Lemieux that would have tied it. Leetch was able to lift Lemieux’s stick six inches off the ice, just enough for the centering pass to land right on the tape of Messier, who turned and flipped it from the left faceoff circle. In as straight a line as a puck will ever travel, Messier’s shot made a beeline for the Devils’ yawning net and completed perhaps the greatest single period of hockey ever orchestrated by a single player in one of the grandest stages that this game offers. At 18:15 of the third, Messier capped off an incredible hat trick that gave the Rangers a 4–2 lead in a game they were severely outplayed in for almost two periods.
“So, what does he do [after The Guarantee]? He goes out and scores three goals in a row, bails them out of a tough spot, and wins a game for them that they had to win,” Russo said. “Unbelievable. And the idea around New York that we always talked about was to break this kind of jinx, to break The Curse, you had to win a game like that, Game 6. You had to win a game that way. And they did.”
Messier knew that better than anyone. In fact, instead of the common celebratory group hug on the ice after a goal, Messier did one better after the empty-netter. He raced over to the bench, where the entire team could share in the moment.
“You always really have to remain consistent in your beliefs and philosophy,” he said later.
“That was a real key thing for Mark,” Lidster said. “Everyone was important to the cause, to the mission we were on. No matter who it was—the guy who delivered the UPS packages, he had an important role on the team. Everyone was a part of it. Mark created that atmosphere, and we all loved it. He knew just what to do, and when to do it.”
Hovering above the mass of blue uniforms and equipment stood an elated Keenan. Dissected every which way by the media, the fans, and even his own players, Keenan’s midstream lineup change had paid dividends. Was it still Mike’s team at this point? Did it really matter? The important thing for fans in New York was that their team was still alive.
“That’s what this group of Rangers could do so well. We could adapt to a style, to a strategy, a lineup, and make it work for us,” Steve Larmer said. “It’s an incredible feeling to be around a group of players with that ability. At the end of the day, it was an incredible journey to go through with incredible teammates.”
“When you make a bold guarantee like that, and then you back it up by going out and playing like that, certainly Mark became a sports figure in this town that will never be forgotten,” Mike Francesa said. “There was so much going on, and Mark kept that team together. It was Mark that did that. Richter kept the game within reach, and what a performance he put on in that Game 6. Unforgettable. But for Mark to rise to the occasion like that, truly, it was one of the great moments in New York sports history. It really puts him in a special place in New York, and it’s a different place, because he played and won in Edmonton, and the best part of his career was played somewhere else. But he delivered it, he backed it up, and to make that guarantee at the most critical time? Unbelievable.”
From the brink of elimination to riding a momentum wave the size of the city they played in, the Rangers—anchored by a two-word guarantee—were suddenly moments away from tying the Eastern Conference Finals, a series that was already headed for legendary status.
“Do you believe it?” Thorne asked on the telecast with his famous, exclamatory tone appropriating the moment precisely and efficiently as the final goal crossed the line. “Do you believe it?”
The answer for so many was…no.
“Unbelievable,” Barry Melrose said.
“The stuff of legends,” Mike Emrick said.
“Mark went above and beyond in that series. I clearly remember him turning around, absolutely,” Richter said. “And when he flipped the puck toward the empty net, I knew it was going in. Just knew it. It was on a perfect line and I don’t even think it hit the ice until the red line. I simply couldn’t believe it. ‘Did he just do that?’”
Of course, lost in all of the drama was Richter himself. Keep in mind, he held New Jersey scoreless for the final two periods, stopping 17 shots. He was rarely tested in the third, clearly, as a crumbling Devils squad mounted just four shots. But given his margin of error at the time, it was a flawless performance.
“I always thought that Richter did not get enough credit in that series,” Russo said. “Messier was great. Leetch was great. But especially after what he did in Game 6, Richter saved the series. He outplayed Brodeur.”
In an ultimate slap-in-the-face moment for the home team, the visiting Rangers fans littered the ice with hats in honor of Messier’s hat trick. Down they came from all sections in all different colors, extending the misery for a team that just needed to get back in the locker room to focus on the next game in New York. The Devils could only watch and hope that they’d get another chance to play a home game in the next round against the Canucks.
Lou Lamoriello, a study in calm professionalism win, lose, or draw, could only sit in the press box with his hands over his mouth in amazement, his white hair a bit frazzled after a long night, as his counterpart Neil Smith stood, pumped his fist, and smiled the smile of a general manager who just earned a Game 7 on home ice.
“As I watched us come back, things began to change, yes,” Smith said. “And when Mess scored the empty-netter and we went up two goals, I turned to see where that guy was, the guy who was killing me all night from the stands. And he was gone! Nowhere to be seen. He had left the building. I’ll never forget that guy. But Mess was the stuff of legends that night, and it’ll go down in New York sports history, and all of sports history, for sure. It was something to see. Game 6 was truly an unbelievable experience. One I’ll never forget.”
As the ice was still being readied for play, Messier took the ice again to stay warm, not content to rest on his laurels. In a fitting move for a captain looking to keep his teammates focused on the task at hand, Messier circled and headed back toward the bench, held out his glove for some encouragement, and uttered three simple words:
“One. Four. Five.” he said, shaking his head slowly. “One. Four. Five.”
His message? That the Rangers still had 1:45 to play before officially registering this victory.
“The Devils were so close. And now, they are so, so far away,” Clement said. “What a series.”
The Rangers won a faceoff in the final seconds, and again the puck landed on the stick of Lidster in the left corner next to Richter. At that point, the Devils pulled back, Lidster maintained possession, and the final seconds of a 4–2 season-saving victory ticked off.
“Messier with The Guarantee, and Kovalev’s goal in Game 6, the whole thing was so dramatic,” WFAN’s Steve Somers said. “Outside of Namath, the guy comes through with a hat trick. You can’t make it up.”
The game indeed ended with Lidster in possession. But the night belonged to someone else in blue, and Emrick summed it up better than anyone: “The called shot. The hat trick. The win. Mark Messier.”
The effort left the Rangers captain with 10 playoff goals in 15 games.
“To say it is one thing. To go out and back it up is another,” Melrose said. “But to score a hat trick along the way? You’ve got to be kidding me. This was a great series with a lot of special plays and special players. None bigger than Mark Messier.”
What could not be lost in New York’s euphoria—and it stood to reason that it wouldn’t among these players—was that all this victory did was tie the series. Had the pendulum swung? Certainly. Was the series over? Hardly.
“At that point, we still had to win a game,” Smith said. “There were no assurances that we were going to come back and run them off the ice in Game 7. I always compared it to Team USA in 1980. The Miracle on Ice was incredible, and beating Russia will go down in history forever, but so many people forget that the Americans still had to win another game, against Finland, to win the gold medal, and they had to come from behind in that game just to do so. We had work to do, certainly.”
And that was fine with the media, too. With a day off in between the games, there was plenty of time to get that New York media hype machine firing on all cylinders again.
“This will be the biggest game in these two franchises’ history,” McNab said on the broadcast, “going back, at least, 50 years. Buckle up.”
As that Game 6 horn sounded in East Rutherford, the Devils retreated, gave themselves a few polite taps on the pants, and plodded back into the locker room a beaten bunch, left to wonder what had just happened.
Meanwhile, across the ice a sea of blue gathered around Richter. There were smiles, laughs, hugs, and taps on the helmets. Keenan was off to the left as he walked around the boards and into the hallway with his staff. He didn’t look up much, he didn’t smile, and he didn’t give any hint of satisfaction or contentment. This was, after all, just the third win of the series. Most of all, he seemed happy to leave the celebration to his players. After the turmoil, the tension, and the uncertainty surrounding his relationship with his stars, this moment was the players’ to enjoy, if only for a brief time. In a matter of hours, it’d be back to business in New York, preparing for the game of games, the grand finale to what was becoming “The Greatest Series Ever.”
As a smiling Messier charged into that celebratory goal-crease hug, with his patented leather helmet chinstrap dangling from his ear, he turned, grabbed Sergei Nemchinov and defenseman Jay Wells, looked them straight in the eyes, and offered two determined words that needed no further explanation:
“One more.”