Park told a beauty about how his physical play caused a family divide.
"My mother loved Montreal Canadiens star Jean Beliveau," Park remembered. "Maybe the first year of my career (1968-69 as a 20-year-old with the Rangers), Beliveau came across the blue line and I laid into him with a hip check -- boom! -- and sent him up and over. My mother didn't talk to me for a month."
Then there was Park's brilliant tale about being at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens in 1960 as a 12-year-old, chasing autographs. He had collected many but was stunned when the famously polite Frank Mahovlich, a decade his senior, told him to get lost.
Park was stung by the rebuke, for years, and he said that after cracking the Rangers lineup at age 20 he'd get in an extra shot on Mahovlich any time they met in front of the Rangers goal.
"I finally told Frank why I punched him, but it wasn't until we were playing old-timers hockey together," Park said, "And it was Frank who apologized to me, saying he'd probably had a bad day with (coach) Punch Imlach."
"You should have asked me," joked Bob Nevin, sitting beside Park. "I'd have signed for you."
Nevin would arrive in New York from the Toronto Maple Leafs on Feb. 22, 1964 as part of a blockbuster trade that exchanged himself, Dick Duff, Rod Seiling, Arnie Brown and Bill Collins for Andy Bathgate and Don McKenney.
He finally would be shipped by the Rangers to the Minnesota North Stars on May 25, 1971, with Hadfield replacing Nevin as Rangers captain after Nevin succeeded Bathgate.
Nevin's last game with the Rangers was Game 6 of the Stanley Cup semifinal against Toronto on April 15, 1971. In fact, he scored the series clincher in overtime, at Maple Leaf Gardens.
Hadfield said he believed Nevin was the only man in the room he had never pranked. And then he grinned again.
"But it's early."
Photos courtesy of Doug Ball
Video: WPG@NYR: Rangers raise Hadfield's No. 11 to rafters