Guardians of the Goal

A history of Rangers goalies through the ages!

New York Rangers fans have always loved their goaltenders and, throughout their history, the Blueshirts have been blessed with some of the very best in the game. Through the first nine-plus decades of their existence, eighty-eight men from Canada, the United States, and Europe have toiled between the pipes at Madison Square Garden. They all shared the same responsibility, yet each brought their own style, personality, character, and idiosyncrasies to the position and provided unique memories for those of us who watched them.

In Guardians of the Goal, each one of these brave men is discussed in chronological order, while providing an overview of their era and the general managers and coaches they played for. Such players highlighted in this book include:

·         Mike Richter

·         Ed Giacomin

·         John Vanbiesbrouck

·         Henrik Lundqvist

·         Davey Kerr

·         And many more.

Regardless of whether they were a franchise goalie, a flash in the pan, or an emergency fill-in, each of these “Lone Rangers,” or as Steve Baker once called them, “The few, the proud, and the very busy,” have one thing in common: they all tried their best to keep that little one-inch by three-inch piece of frozen, vulcanized rubber out of the gaping twenty-four square foot chasm behind them. Some were more successful than others, but as you will see, although they may occasionally “steal” a game, in most cases a goaltender is only as good as the team in front of him.

Guardians of the Goal is just that: an ode to those Blueshirts who laid it out night in and night out, leaving it all out on the ice for our Rangers.

George Grimm is a former I.T. Auditor and technical writer who began writing about the Rangers in 1988 when he published SportStat, The Ranger Report. He then wrote the Blueseat Point of View column for the Blueshirt Bulletin for many years. The author of We Did Everything But Win, Grimm currently writes the Retro Rangers column for Insidehockey.com and his work has also appeared in the Rangers Game Night program, Bergen (NJ) magazine, and the LoHud Rangers Report Blog.

Stan Fischler is a legend of sports broadcasting. He began his career as a publicist for the New York Rangers in 1954 and has been covering hockey in the over half a century since. The winner of seven Emmy Awards, Fischler has worked in every medium from print to TV to Twitter. This "Hockey Maven" currently serves as the resident hockey expert for MSG and MSG Plus. He appears on weekly MSG Networks features and as a commentator on Islanders and Devils games. The author of more than one hundred books, Fischler lives in New York City.