Madison Square Garden (1925) Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ====Hockey==== The [[New York Rangers]], owned by the Garden's owner [[Tex Rickard]], got their name from a play on words involving his name: ''Tex's Rangers''. However, the Rangers were not the first NHL team to play at the Garden; the [[New York Americans]] had begun play in 1925 – and officially opened the Garden in front of 17,000 by losing to the [[Montreal Canadiens]], 3-1<ref name=ballp/> – [[Shorty Green]] of the Americans was the first player to score a goal in the arena.<ref name=Gazette/> The Americans were so tremendously successful that Rickard wanted his own team. The Rangers were founded in 1926 and played their first game in the Garden on November 16, 1926.<ref name=ballp/> Both teams played at the Garden until the Americans suspended operations in 1942 due to [[World War II]]. In the meantime, the Rangers had usurped the Americans with their own success, winning three [[Stanley Cup]]s between 1928 and 1940. The refusal of the Garden's management to allow the postwar resurrection of the Americans team was one popular theory underlying the [[Curse of 1940]], which supposedly prevented the Rangers from winning another Stanley Cup until 1994. Another alleged cause of "The Curse" stemmed from manager Kilpatrick burning the Garden's mortgage papers in the bowl of the Stanley Cup, made possible by receipts from the 1940 Cup run. Hockey purists believed that the trophy had been "defiled", leading to the Rangers' woes. The [[New York Rovers]], a farm team of the Rangers, played in the Garden on Sunday afternoons, while the Rangers played on Wednesday and Sunday nights.<ref name=ballp/> [[Tommy Lockhart]] managed the Rovers games and introduced on-ice promotions such as racing [[model aircraft]] and [[bicycle]]s around the arena, [[figure skating]] acts [[Ice Follies|Shipstads & Johnson Ice Follies]] and [[Sonja Henie]], and a skating [[grizzly bear]].<ref name="Miller">{{cite web|url=http://www.chuckthewriter.com/ehl.pdf|title=FROM ATLANTIC CITY TO TORONTO: The Boardwalk Trophy and the Eastern Hockey League|last=Miller|first=Chuck|website=Hockey Ink!|access-date=2018-04-16}}</ref> The fourth floor of the Garden had a second sheet of ice, used for public skating, recreational hockey, and as the Rangers' practice facility. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page