The NHL announced the other day that if both conference finals end by Tuesday, May 26, the Cup finals would begin Thursday, May 28—in other words, one day off for the Eastern Conference winner.

If not, Game 1 of the finals would be Friday, June 5.

Now Chicago has won a game against Detroit, so that series can’t end any earlier than Wednesday, May 27. But it’s possible that both series will be over by that night, and that the finals (a rematch of last year, Pittsburgh-Detroit) would then not start until nine days later, June 5.

And this is obviously to appease NBC with a couple of weekends worth of games. Yuck.

It’s Fleet Week in NYC, and I have to tell you a story about that. I used to buy tickets to all the Rangers’ playoff series because I had so many friends who always asked me for them. You had to buy strips of tickets for all possible series.

So this one year, the Rangers played the Flyers, lost the first two in Philly, came home and lost Game 3 at MSG. Now nobody wanted the tickets. Nobody.

Before Game 4, I was outside the Garden trying to sell them. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon during Fleet Week, so the city was crawling with sailors. I didn’t want to get into any trouble scalping, but a bunch of Navy guys in uniform had approached me about my tickets, so I asked a NYPD officer if it was OK if I sold my tickets for face value. He said I probably shouldn’t, but when I told him I was stuck with them, and that these sailors wanted to go to the game, he said, “OK.”

The only problem was the sailors didn’t have enough cash. So the cop agreed to walk us to a nearby ATM. So here I am crossing 33rd Street and Broadway with two sailors and a cop, thinking, “My God, I’m in the Village People.”
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Some sad news yesterday. Clint Smith, the last member of the 1940 Rangers Stanley Cup team, died at age 95. I remember so clearly when he came to the Garden a few times, including the 75th anniversary season, and how guys like Messier, Graves, Leetch and Richter (the usuals) treated him with such respect.

Here is the AP’s story
  VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP)—Hall of Fame player Clint Smith, a two-time winner of the Lady Byng Trophy while with the Chicago Blackhawks and New York Rangers, has died. He was 95.
  Smith died Tuesday, the Vancouver Canucks announced Thursday. He played 11 years in the NHL with New York (1936-43) and Chicago (1943-47) and was the lone surviving member of the Rangers’ Stanley Cup-winning team in 1940. Teammate Alf Pike died in March.
  Smith was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1991.
  The 5-foot-8, 165-pound center won the Lady Byng Trophy in 1939 and 1944, an award given for skill and gentlemanly play. He had only 24 penalty minutes in 483 regular-season games. Smith had a four-season stretch in which he wasn’t called for a penalty.
  In the 1943-44 season, Smith set an NHL record with 49 assists while playing on a line with future Hall of Famers Bill Mosienko and Doug Bentley. The trio set a league scoring record by producing 219 total points.
Smith also shares the NHL record for most goals in a period with four, set on March 4, 1945, against Montreal. He played his early hockey in Saskatchewan before moving to Vancouver in 1933 to play for the Vancouver Lions of the North West Hockey League. He led the league with 25 goals in his rookie season.
  Following his NHL career, Smith played with the Tulsa Oilers of the USHL and was chosen as the league’s most valuable player in 1948. He was a player-coach for the St. Paul Saints of the USHL and a full-time coach with the Cincinnati Mohawks of the American Hockey League in 1952.
  Smith returned to Vancouver in 1953 to play old-timers hockey.He was founding member of the British Columbia Hockey Benevolent Association, also known as the Canucks Alumni. He held various positions within the organization, including president.
  Smith also retained ties to the Rangers organization throughout his life and took part in the team’s 75th anniversary celebration nine years ago at Madison Square Garden.
 Funeral plans were not immediately announced.
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Another sad note yesterday. Wayne Allwine died at age 62. He was the voice of Mickey Mouse.

 Just got a release about Brendan Shanahan appearing on Gary Bettman’s radio show today. The show airs from 4-5 p.m. on NHL Home Ice (XM Channel 204 and on Sirius Channel 208).

To ask questions, call 1-877-645-6696 or e-mail at nhlhour@nhl.com.

No. Not Heineken.

I have no idea if this is big news or not. Probably not. Here’s the release from the Rangers:

RANGERS AGREE TO TERMS WITH FREE AGENT DEFENSEMAN ILKKA HEIKKINEN

            New York, May 20, 2009 – New York Rangers President and General Manager Glen Sather announced today that the club has agreed to terms with free agent defenseman Ilkka Heikkinen.

Heikkinen, 24, skated in 54 games with HIFK Helsinki of the SM-liiga this past season, registering eight goals and 26 assists for 34 points, along with 22 penalty minutes.  His 34 points ranked third among all SM-liiga defensemen.  He led all HIFK defensemen in goals (eight), assists (26) and points, while finishing second on the team overall in assists, fourth in points and seventh in goals.  The Rauma, Finland native recorded two, six-game scoring streaks – November 13 at Tappara to November 25 at Espoo (two goals and five assists) and January 15 vs. Kärpät to January 26 at Kärpät (two goals and six assists) – and posted five multi-point performances, including two, three-point efforts – January 15 vs. Kärpät (one goal and two assists) and February 14 at Lukko (one goal and two assists).  In addition, he recorded one assist in two postseason contests with HIFK.

The 6-2, 200-pounder has appeared in 283 career SM-liiga games with Lukko Rauma and HIFK Helsinki, collecting 31 goals and 82 assists for 113 points, along with 255 penalty minutes.  In 2007-08, Heikkinen established career-highs in goals (11), points (37) and penalty minutes (96), while his 26 assists led all HIFK skaters.  In addition, he has appeared in 21 career SM-liiga playoff games with Lukko and HIFK, registering three assists and six penalty minutes.

Today is one of those days we talked about earlier … where there isn’t much happening, and I don’t really have time to chat other than to say Hi and to give you a blank canvas.

So … Hi.

As Mike Myers used to say on Saturday Night Live: “Talk amongst yourselves.”

I’ll check in later tonight or tomorrow.

I really hope to not make too big an issue out of this, especially since we have almost two full rounds of playoffs still to go. But, man, last night we had a great game, played really hard, entertaining to the end, and yet I found myself going back to the Yankees or checking my email. Why? Versus.

And I must say, my anger hasn’t yet subsided from the two Game 7s last week. The NHL decides that Versus is its home, and the cable station can’t find a way to show both Game 7s on one night? Not only that, but it keeps on promising to join Carolina-Boston in progress—an altercation in the first game was missed because Versus was promoting the second game—and then when the first game ends, Versus goes to seven or eight commercials before going back to studio to tell us that Carolina-Boston is between the second and third periods. They couldn’t give us that info before the commercials?

Plus, why didn’t Versus switch to the Carolina-Boston game between periods of its first game?

On top of that, Versus—the NHL’s TV partner—didn’t even bother sending a crew to Boston. It used TSN’s feed (with Pierre McGuire). So at least we saw a production of higher quality.

PS, nice couple of days at the new Boston Garden, huh, with the hometown Bruins and Celtics both losing home Game 7s.

The weirdest thing happened. I was unable to blog for a week and … I missed you guys. I really did. I couldn’t wait to get back in here, even though I had nothing to add and nothing in particular to say. I just missed the back-and-forth, all the hockey talk and even moreso, all the nonsense we share.

I never would have thought that I’d be so happy—in this one single regard—to get back to work.

Not much happening, really, although I’m sure a lot of you had a little heart-jump with the speculation that Cablevision was going to sell the Garden and its teams—which Cablevision promptly shot down.

Just a couple of things on the conference finals.

1) I know I don’t have to convince most of you guys to root against the Penguins. I’m rooting for Carolina, sort of. Oh, those who know me know that I am not a fan of hockey in places like Raleigh (sorry, just a personal old-school choice). But I’m pulling for the Hurricanes because—and you may not know this—Paul Maurice is one of Adam Graves’ best friends, and any great friend of Adam must be a terrific person. Dumb reason? Oh well.

2) Did you catch the level of skill in the Western final? Wow. Chicago did it the hard way, finishing out of the money all those years and finally building a roster out of the ashes. But it’s truly incredible what Detroit has done. The Red Wings have been an NHL superpower since the early 1990s (they were shockingly upset in the first round in ‘94 or they may have been the Rangers’ opponents in the final), and yet they have managed to draft better than teams in the lottery, and have kept a remarkable stream of home-grown talent coming. Unlike some other teams who will remain nameless.

Special thanks to Jane McManus for filling in all week long, and for keeping you guys entertained with some really clever posts. She’s the best, and she really loves doing this stuff.

What a week it’s been. You dubbed Henrik Lundqvist “Wonderwall,” guessed who the Rangers were in my three stories, wrote some killer stories about which Rangers had been naughty or nice off the ice, and wrote some hysterical job descriptions.

I really liked The Esteemed Doodie Machetto’s idea of taking the last day of my tenure in Carp’s absence to write out favorite moments from the season.

Mine was Adam Graves’ night. I was there with Carp that evening, and it was my first Rangers game as a writer. (I’d been to a bunch as a fan when the law firm I worked in had corporate seats in the 1990’s, a lifetime ago. Yes, I was one of the people in the really good seats who came for the beer, the seats were next to Janet Jones. Unfortunately the job was soul-sucking, but I digress…)

Carp obviously knew Graves, who played during the 63-year span Carp covered the Rangers. He even wrote the program notes for the Garden that evening. I was struck by how moved the crowd was when Graves spoke. How everyone stood for the whole thing, and how grown men were literally wiping tears from their eyes.

I am a sucker for scenes like that.

Feel free to add your own, be it a win, a coaching change or watching someone get slammed to the boards.

And by the way, I informed Josh of what’s going on here, and he nodded his 26-year-old, disembodied head sadly. Actually, he laughed and said this was a pretty fun goup of people. So there.

UPDATE: If you were looking for something to do tonight, Sean Avery is opening his new club, Warren 77 tonight. Not sure if Rangers jerseys are proper attire.

Brief post this morning and then I’m off to the Jets, but I want to steal another idea from Nasty 1 and another poster from Monday’s thread.

Hockey can’t last forever. and eventually all players have to retire. Now if you’re Mark Messier or Adam Graves, that probably means a lot of charity work, trips to the Bahamas and nights at the Garden to see your number hanging from the rafters.

But what about everyone else?

If your favorite Ranger had broken his leg in his first year of junior hockey and joined the chess team instead, what would he be doing today? For example, (and I’m borrowing here) Paul Mara would be on some fishing boat in Maine where he catches lobster with his bare hands, cooks it over an open fire and then chops down a few trees.

His teammates?

And a Ranger in action, press release below:

Ron Duguay and Ken Daneyko will host a special edition of their weekly SIRIUS XM Radio talk show, Ice Breakers, alongside guest host Sean Avery, from the NHL Powered By Reebok Store on Thursday, May 14, to discuss the 2009 Stanley Cup Playoffs. It will be today from 5 to 7 p.m. at the NHL Store in Manhattan, 47th St. and 6th Ave.

That was great yesterday. I could not believe how fast you all were able to figure out who each one was. For today’s post, I’m going to do something a little different. Get out your hankies.

Before he left on “vacation,” Carp suggested I do a little something to reflect how much he and I really enjoyed covering the Rangers after Sam Weinman left, so here goes.

When the playoffs started I went down to the Garden to do a fan story, where I looked for local people to talk about how they had gotten tickets, what they thought the Rangers could do in the postseason, pretty basic. I ran into this woman who was soaking wet from riding the Rangers double decker bus. She had been sitting in the upper deck despite the rain just to scream her head off in Times Square before Game 1.

Carolyn Lawler was her name. Great to talk to, aspiring sportswriter. I wrap it up and she said, “Are you Jane?” She was a blog reader. I was there with Carp (the photo is from that game) and between us we had about dozen people come up to us to say hello, give us their screen names (What up cml, Raider, L.I. Joe) and talk about the Rangers. I guess then I realized that the blog was as much about give and take as the actual Rangers are with their fans. It’s a different kind of interaction than I’ve seen in other sports, more personal.

So this has been a really cool experience. When Sam left, we weren’t so sure we wouldn’t get booed out of the room. We had some typos in the beginning trying to get stuff out as fast as we could, and you guys were great about pointing it out without making us feel like total boneheads. (Boneheads?) Short story, Carp and I have loved doing this.

So I thought I’d take Warren Mason’s idea and call for your stories about the best and worst interactions you’ve had with a Ranger. I know I’ve seen some posts on this over the last few months, I think a lot around the time of Adam Graves’ night, but clearly you guys can tell a story as well as we can.

That, or free agent speculation or whatever else you want to add.