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New York sports fans are having a dream weekend, especially if their favorite team calls Madison Square Garden its home. The Rangers came back from a two-goal deficit Thursday night to knock off the Carolina Hurricanes in six games and punch their ticket to the NHL’s Eastern Conference Finals. It’s the second time in three years the Broadway Blueshirts have been there, as they try to snap a thirty-year title drought; the last time the Rangers hoisted the Stanley Cup was in 1994. The Knicks, meanwhile, will play in Indiana Friday night with a three-games-to-two lead in their playoff series with the Pacers; a win tonight or on Sunday in Game Seven would send them to the NBA’s Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since 1999, as they bid for the team’s first title since 1973.
The festive mood feels like 1994, when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup and the Knicks came within a game of capturing the NBA title. WOR street reporter Natalie Migliore spoke to ecstatic fans outside the Garden Friday morning, all of whom- with the exception of a lone Islanders fan, who dismissively said, “My Islanders are out, so I ain’t got nothin’ to say about the Rangers!”- were ecstatic. Migliore appeared on 710 WOR’s Len Berman and Michael Riedel in the Morning program to share their comments.
Migliore stopped one Rangers fan who kept tabs on the game on his phone at a dinner party. “Honestly, I didn’t even get a chance to watch. I was at a dinner, so I was kind of very quietly following it on my phone. This team has had issues with maintaining grit and staying in there, and the fact that they came back and didn’t collapse like they did the last two seasons just, I mean, that was everything. I was tearing up, and I didn’t even watch the game, I was tearing up just following it.”
But New York is traditionally a basketball town, and Migliore found one Knicks fan who summed up the thrill of rooting for a title team in his lifetime. “I’m certainly ready for tonight. I’m hoping that they can wrap it up and clinch it and not have to come back to New York and play game seven. For me, I’m gonna be 60 years old. I’ve been waiting for this a lifetime. I can speak for myself, I’m elated and I’m hoping for positive things, similar to what the Rangers experienced last night.”
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