“I’m the first New York Ranger.”
Throughout the Rangers’ first 99 seasons in the NHL, over 1,100 players have appeared in at least game with the franchise. Of those 1,100 players, only 30 were born in the state of New York, and even fewer were born in the five boroughs that comprise New York City.
The first New York City native to play for the Rangers, Nick Fotiu, earned that distinction after making his NHL debut on October 6, 1976. It was a remarkable achievement for several reasons, such as Fotiu’s perseverance and dedication to becoming not just an NHL player, but a Ranger, and how his path to the NHL fulfilled a prophecy of Emile Francis, the Rangers’ legendary head coach and general manager.
Nearly a decade before Fotiu signed with the Rangers on June 30, 1976, Francis helped establish the Metropolitan Junior Hockey Association. He promised Rangers president, William Jennings, that within a decade, the Rangers would have a New York native playing for the team.
Fotiu’s desire to become a Ranger began when he was 16 years old, when he attended his first NHL game. The game he attended was the Rangers’ first contest at the current Madison Square Garden on February 18, 1968, against the Philadelphia Flyers.
“Going to that game was very special,” Fotiu said recently. “I can still remember seeing the ice and how bright it was. There was this feeling that went right through me.”
Fotiu recalled that just a few months after he attended that first game, he was sleeping outside of MSG to secure tickets to Rangers games during the 1968 Stanley Cup Playoffs. That summer, he took his first steps to learn how to play hockey. The journey that Fotiu took to improve was not an easy one – both literally and figuratively.
At that time, the only ice where Fotiu could skate was on the outdoor ponds. To get formal instruction and skate indoors, Fotiu had to travel to Skateland in New Hyde Park on Long Island to play. “It took three hours to get from Staten Island to Skateland,” Fotiu said. The three-hour trek included a bus ride over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn, a train ride from Brooklyn to Jamaica, Queens, and then another bus ride to New Hyde Park.
“Sometimes, I would stay at my aunt’s house since she lived in Greenwich Village, so that cut the time down,” Fotiu recalled. “It was a long haul and you had to be committed. I can remember my friends asking me, ‘Where are you going?’ I told them I was going to skate, and they said I was crazy and that I would never play for the Rangers because those players in the NHL started to skate when they were three years old.
“I said, ‘I’m going to play (for the Rangers).’ I knew I could make it, I just needed time.”
Fotiu began playing in the Met League that Francis established as a member of the New Hyde Park Arrows. In addition, he attended Rod Gilbert’s hockey school at Skateland.
“I remember his desire,” Gilbert said shortly before Fotiu made his debut with the Rangers in 1976. “We worked on his skating. The next thing was to teach him to keep his position.”
Fotiu improved his skills enough to begin his professional hockey career five years after he first attended Gilbert’s hockey school. At 21 years old, he made his debut in the North American Hockey League with Cape Cod, which was the shared farm team for both the Rangers and Boston Bruins in the league. He led the NAHL with 374 penalty minutes during the 1973-74 season with Cape Cod, and he added 36 points in 72 games.
The following season, Fotiu joined the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association. Following Fotiu’s second season there, John Ferguson, who had replaced Francis by this time as head coach and general manager of the Rangers, was looking to add toughness to the Rangers. Ferguson was one of the toughest players in the NHL during his eight-season career with the Montreal Canadiens, and after he saw Fotiu play during the team’s rookie camp prior to the 1976-77 season, he felt that the Staten Island native could be a regular player in the NHL.
During warmups prior to the start of his first pre-season game with the Rangers on September 23, 1976, at MSG, Fotiu threw a puck into the stands – not just into the stands, but to a fan sitting in the Blue Seats near the top of The Garden. Fotiu explained later that as someone who grew up sitting in those seats among die-hard Rangers fans, he knew souvenirs from the ice never made their way to those fans.
Fotiu aimed to remedy that, and in throwing a puck to the Blue Seats that night, he began a tradition that he would continue throughout his tenure in New York.
“That was the fun part of hockey for me,” Fotiu said recently. “I always wanted a puck when I was sitting in the Blue Seats. I told myself that when I played for the Rangers, I was going to throw pucks to fans all over MSG.
“It was my time. I had all of Madison Square Garden to myself. I enjoyed it, throwing pucks and interacting with the kids that were there. It was something special, and I always wanted to do things for Rangers fans.”
In that contest, Fotiu tallied what would be the game-winning goal in a 7-5 victory over the Bruins. Upon scoring the goal, he received a standing ovation from 'The Garden Faithful.’
“I’d like to have been in the stands watching me,” Fotiu said after the game. “It was unbelievable.”
Fotiu’s special relationship with the fans never wavered throughout his tenure in New York. He played parts of eight seasons with the Rangers and helped the team advance to the Stanley Cup Final in 1979.
Above all, as Fotiu said when he spoke to the Rangers’ website recently, he is the first Ranger who was born in New York City, which is something nobody can take away from him.
And it was his passion as a fan that drove him to do what he did on the ice wearing a Rangers uniform.
“I was in the stands (before), so I couldn’t let the fans down (when I played),” Fotiu said. “I had to go out and play with 100% effort all the time, hit, and play aggressive hockey. You play for the fans. The louder they cheered, the harder I hit and the harder I played. I got on the ice, and I would get a standing ovation and I would say to myself, ‘Are you kidding me?’ The fans would go crazy because they knew something was going to happen.
“I think Madison Square Garden is my cathedral. That is where I knew I was going to play.”
