The New York Rangers are a game away from reaching the NHL Eastern Conference Finals, and their quest for another Stanley Cup trophy this year is mirroring that of their 1994 championship run.
Dave Blezow of the New York Post identified a striking amount of similarities between the Rangers’ playoffs runs in 1994 and 2024. They include elements related to the game such as both teams winning the President’s trophy, being led by first-year head coaches and going undefeated through their first six games of the postseason.
The parallels also include external coincidences such as near-identical solar eclipses and earthquakes happening in the lead-up to and during the playoffs, the Knicks being championship contenders with their own title run in the NBA, and O.J. Simpson being the talk of the town amid the biggest time of the year for both sports.
Rangers’ success in the standings behind first-year head coaches 30 years apart is scarily similar
The Rangers won the President’s trophy in ’94 with a 52-24-8 record, while the 2024 Rangers took home the same award after leading the NHL with a 55-23-4 record.
Back in ’94, the Rangers were led to Stanley Cup glory by head coach Mike Keenan, who previously coached the Philadelphia Flyers, while Peter LaViolette took the reigns from former head coach Gerard Gallant after his two seasons at the Rangers’ helm from 2021-22 to 2022-23.
Natural phenomenons also happened in like manner around the time of both playoffs
The coincidental solar eclipses took place on May 10, 1994 and April 8, 2024, the latter of which took place just before the playoffs began. The earthquakes were a bit less coincidental, with the ’94 4.6 magnitude quake in the northeast taking place in Pennsylvania in January of that year while the northeast was again rocked with a 4.8 magnitude quake in April of 2024.
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Rangers and Knicks have seen playoff success in 1994 and 2024, with O.J. Simpson being right in the mix of things
Blezow noted that the Knicks and Rangers’ four-day streak playing in front of their home fans at Madison Square Garden ending on Tuesday will usurp the longest such streak for both teams playing concurrently in the playoffs since… the ’94 Rangers and Knicks did so three times that year. They both made it to the championship round in their respective sports in 1994.
To cap it off, O.J. Simpson’s storied white bronco chase overwhelmed the entire airwaves on June 17, 1994, during the Rangers’ championship parade, while his death on April 10, 2024, just preceded the start of the Rangers’ playoff run this time around.
There are a few other events that make the Rangers’ 2024 campaign comparable to that of 1994. If the resemblance between both playoff runs holds any more weight than merely entertaining food for thought, New York could be on their way to another title this spring.