In the second region of the first annual New York Rangers March Madness bracket, we come to the grinder and enforcer region.
The National Hockey League still remains the only professional sports league in North America that allows and even implicitly encourages fighting. While not every player in this region is an old school enforcer that would drop the gloves to defend a teammate, those that did were some of the best to do it.
For as long as Glen Sather is even tangentially associated with the New York Rangers’ organization, the team will never totally go away from the hard-nosed and old school style of players that won him Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers as head coach back in the 1980s. That is at least in part why the Rangers featured some of the players on this region.
As anyone who’s won a Stanley Cup will ever tell you, it takes almost a spiritual level of commitment to the other players in the dressing room. Hockey Hall of Famer and Ranger legend Mark Messier described the 1993-1994 Stanley Cup Champion team as “a family, calling it a team didn’t do it justice.”
The players in this region include a former captain, someone infamous enough to get a rule named after him and several key components to Ranger teams that made deep postseason runs.