On August 15 in Rangers history: Roger Neilson takes over

What happened on August 15 in the history of the New York Rangers

On this date in 1989, the New York Rangers hired Roger Neilson as their new head coach as part of a complete makeover of the management team.  He was hired by Neil Smith who had replaced General Manager Phil Esposito after a disastrous season.

The goal was to bring some stability to the organization after the tumultuous years that Esposito had run the team, culminating in his trading for coach Michel Bergeron only to fire him after two seasons.  In Roger Neilson, Smith hoped he had found the answer.

Neilson had already coached four other teams and had one first place finish on his resume with the Buffalo Sabres, but lost that job due to a conflict with GM Scotty Bowman.  Neilson led the Vancouver Canucks to the Stanley Cup Final after taking over for a suspended Harry Neale.

Neilson was an innovator and one of the first proponents of using video to prepare for games. He was actually known as “Captain Video.”

Neilson found success in New York, finishing first in the Patrick Division twice in his first three years and the team won the Presidents’ Trophy in 1992.  They couldn’t get past the Division Finals in any of his three seasons and Mark Messier orchestrated his firing in the 1992-93 season, leading to the hiring of Mike Keenan.

Today’s birthdays

24 NHL players were born on August 15 with four of them former Blueshirts and all of them belong in the franchise trivia book.

Craig MacTavish was born on this date in 1958 in London, Ontario.  The center played only 35 games (12 regular season, 23 playoff) for the Rangers, but he won probably the most famous faceoff in Rangers’ history.  With 1.6 seconds left in Game Seven of the 1994 Final, MacTavish won the draw that sealed the win and the end of the longest playoff drought in NHL history.  He was also the last NHL player to compete without a helmet, retiring in 1997 after 1,093 games for five different teams.

Martin Biron was born on August 15, 1977 in Lac-St-Charles, Quebec.  The goalie makes a couple trivia notes for the Rangers as he is one of a handful of players who played for all three teams from New York State.  He is also famous for losing his starting job to a young Swedish goalie named Henrik Lundqvist.  Biron played most of his career with the Buffalo Sabres and is known for wearing number 00.  He was the last player in the NHL to be able to do that as the league enacted a rule in banning that uniform number (it somehow affected their stat-tracking software).  It’s known as the “Biron rule.”

Sheldon Kannegiesser was born on this date in 1947 in North Bay, Ontario.  He was a defenseman who was traded to the Rangers from Pittsburgh in March1973. He played 15 games in parts of two seasons before he was sent to Los Angeles in a trade for Gilles Marotte.  He is immortalized in Rangers’ lore as the player with the longest name in franchise history.  His full name is 19 characters long, the most of any player. A few hit 18 characters like John Vanbiesbrouck and Alexander Karpovtsev, but no one has hit 19 letters.  By the way, the longest name on the current team belongs to Alexandar Georgiev with 17 letters.

Stephane Brochu was born on this date in 1967 in Sherbrooke, Quebec.  His entry into the Ranger’s trivia list is because he is one of 60 players who appeared in only one game for the Rangers.  That game was on November 11, 2015, a 3-3 tie in Philadelphia.  The blueliner took one shot and was one ice for one Ranger goal.  He did have a long career as  pro, playing 14 seasons in the minor leagues.