COMMENTARY : Messier Mess Puts Damper on Rangers

The last act of a magnificent sports drama will be played out at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, Oct. 3.

The Rangers will open their home season and the Stanley Cup banner will be raised to the top of the place, and only then will last season really end.

Only then can we close the books on Game 7 of the Rangers-Canucks series. Only then do we finally end the night of June 14, 1994.

You cannot hold a ceremony like that, at the top of the hockey world, without Mark Messier in uniform, without Messier in the Garden and on the ice. This problem with Messier’s new contract has gone on long enough.

Messier was on the phone last week from Hilton Head, S.C. He was in Hilton Head when he should have been in Los Angeles getting ready to play against his old teammate and old friend Wayne Gretkzy.

Messier was on his way into his own gym and on his way to go fishing after that when he should have been in a rink, getting ready to do something he knows everything about: Defend a Stanley Cup.

“The only thing more fun than winning the Cup is defending the Cup,” Messier said.

He was asked what it would be like for him on Oct. 3 if he is still in Hilton Head and has to watch on television as the banner is raised, if he is not on stage with his teammates for the last act of one of the most theatrical shows New York, or any city, will ever see.

“If I’m not there it will be one of the great disappointments of my career,” Messier said. “The raising of the banner is the ritual that solidifies everything. It’s like you’re engraving the whole achievement somehow, up there for everybody to see.”

“I’d be happy for my teammates,” Messier continued. “But I’d feel sick inside, there’s no doubt about that.”

For a few weeks last spring, even as the Knicks were trying to win the NBA championship, the Rangers and hockey were more important than they have ever been in New York.

The Rangers had gone 54 years without winning the Stanley Cup and they nearly lost the whole thing when they fell behind the Devils three games to two in the Cup semifinals.

Then Messier guaranteed victory in Game 6 and scored a hat trick to bring the Rangers from behind in the third period of Game 6. He was Namath that night, and throw in Reggie Jackson, too, because Messier hit three.

Finally, it was June 14 and Game 7 against the Canucks. Messier scored one more goal and the Rangers won and there was Messier holding the Cup in the air and fireworks went off in the Garden. He had made a hockey night at the Garden feel like it had ended with Bobby Thomson’s home run. Nothing quite like this will ever happen again. ITT / Cablevision, the new owners of the Garden, were not around for the night of June 14, but must pick up the tab anyway. You buy the Garden, you buy everything inside it, including terrible curses and glorious memories.

The fans don’t care that the Garden has been sold. They have stopped caring very much that Mike Keenan is gone.

The hysteria about Bob Gutkowski leaving is just media silliness; it became difficult to tell the other day if Gutkowski had just been Garden president or the skipper of PT 109.

The fans just know that Mark Messier delivered in a way few athletes have ever delivered for a New York team, and they want him in uniform in 10 days.

You don’t have to sell Messier to Dave Checketts, the new president of the Garden. He is smart enough to understand the importance of stars. Gutkowski wasn’t the only one on 33rd Street able to figure out something like that, or to close a deal.

Stanley Jaffe, who was Gutkowski’s boss when Paramount still ran the Garden, knew all about stars after a career in Hollywood, even if he does not get one ounce of credit for saying yes to Pat Riley’s deal and yes to Neil Smith’s trade for Messier, and to Messier’s original contract.

But Jaffe, always a real hero at the Garden behind the scenes, is gone. So it is Checketts’ job now to make Charles Dolan of Cablevision and Rand Araskog of ITT understand that you have to pay Messier for three more years even if they’re not convinced he has three more years left in him. I believe Checketts will do that, and then Neil Smith will go make a deal for Messier by the beginning of next week. Because nothing else makes sense.

If Messier is not there to raise the banner on Oct. 3, then don’t bother putting the thing up there. Maybe there is some New York symbolism to the fact that Oct. 3 was the date when Thomson hit his home run for the Giants.

“I don’t think I’m being unfair,” Messier said. “I don’t think I came in and high-balled anybody (asking for about $19 million over the next three seasons).

“Out of respect for Wayne (Gretzky), I did not ask for a number that would make me the highest-paid player in the game.” There was a pause and Mark Messier said, “But I believe I should be second.”

He was supposed to be Gretzky’s sideman with the Oilers when they were winning four Stanley Cups in the 1980s. But Messier turned out to be more. Gretzky left for Los Angeles. Messier won again in Edmonton.

Then he left for New York, knowing he was taking on an immense challenge here, with a franchise that had not won the Stanley Cup since 1940.

And last spring he delivered the goods. He was no one’s side-man here. He was the star, doing a full star turn in last spring’s playoffs. He turns out to be one of the great winners of his generation. He delivered the goods in New York the way Reggie did, after Reggie had won plenty with the A’s.

“I want to play three more years and win three more Cups,” Messier said yesterday. “But if I’m going to do that, I better get started.”

He addressed a crazy rumor that he might be traded to the Blues for Brett Hull. “I’ve said this before. This is my last stop. I’d think about hanging (my skates) up before I’d get traded again.”

Messier was asked if he is angry that writing a new contract has taken as long as it has, put everybody this close to the beginning of the regular season.

“I feel anxious,” he said. “It’s the time of year when I should be playing hockey and I feel a strong desire to be playing. I know I’ve put myself in this situation. But I’m supposed to be in a rink.”

In the end, sports is about memory and it is about hope. Messier is both for the Rangers. It is why he is worth the money he is asking. The Garden really should pay him before the weekend is over.

Messier knows as much about defending the Cup as he does about winning the Cup. It is time to get on with all that. But first Messier must raise a banner, and ring down the curtain on June 14 once and for all.