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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now it's our beginner's guide to watching and enjoying hockey with the New York Rangers getting tantalizingly close to a national hockey league championship.

Speaker 2: Now the Rangers start to celebrate. Final three seconds. They've done it again from three games to one down against Pittsburgh to win the series at round one, down two to nothing in this series, they come back from two games to none down for the third time and 25 such series in franchise history. They won five in a row.

Brian Lehrer: They continued that winning run on Wednesday in the first game of the conference finals against the Tampa Bay Lightning. This year's NHL playoffs has seen some of the most exciting series in the years, certainly for new Yorkers. The Rangers that must be said have been nothing short of heroic, solid defensively with some impressive goal tending, but impressive offensively as well. Wednesday nights game was very exciting. I watched part of it. Here now to talk about the ranger season so far, but also with a beginner's guide to enjoying hockey.

If you're just getting wind, maybe from some of your hockey fan friends that this is a thing in New York right now, the Rangers are getting really close to a championship for the first time in a very long time, how to watch it and enjoy it. Vincent Mercogliano Rangers reporter for the USA Today Network, which includes the local news organization's lowhead.com north of the city and northjersey.com. Welcome to WNYC, Vincent, thank you so much for coming on.

Vincent Mercogliano: No problem, Brian, I appreciate you having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners. We can take your calls right away. You can ask your hockey questions or hear your season-defining moments, shoutouts for specific players so other people can know who some of the stars are. We know who Aaron Judge is. We know who Jacob deGrom is, but a lot of New Yorkers don't know these ranger stars. Give us your favorite Rangers. Tell us how to enjoy hockey or anything else you want to say or ask 212433, WNYC 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer and before we get into some winners or losers, Vincent, or who's a big star. I just want to do some hockey, 101 here.

I think maybe the first thing to say is that hockey is just beautiful to watch because of the visual texture of the ice and that it's people ice skating. For people who like figure skating in the Olympics, for example, this is really fast, competitive figure, try to stop me figure skating. [chuckles] Is that a description you can buy into?

Vincent Mercogliano: Yes, with a lot more physicality and nastiness. These guys definitely like to get after each other and things can get pretty heated out there, especially in the playoffs. It's almost a different brand of hockey from what you see in the regular season, in terms of the speed, in terms of the intensity. I'm a person who grew up loving all sports. Hockey to me might be my favorite sport to watch live in person because it is such a fast game. There are elements to the game that you

won't see on TV that you can see when you're live there in person. It is a beautiful game. It's a game that I've come to appreciate quite a bit.

The skill of these players, not only to be such fast, high-end skaters but handle the puck, make decisions on the fly, lift the puck, pass the puck, do all the various things that you need to do to excel at the NHL level. It's really amazing and the Rangers are a team that they have so much skill, such a diverse group of players, and they have so much youth, which is, I think part of the reason why the city is so behind this team because they saw them go through some lean years where they had to tear it down and rebuild it back up. Now you've got these young guys who came up in the draft, especially with so much promise. Now you're seeing the fruits of that labor.

You're seeing guys that are 20, 21, 22 years old, who are taking off and blossoming right before our eyes. I think that's part of the city's fascination with this team right now as well.

Brian Lehrer: You just said something at the beginning of that answer that I was going to bring up as well, which is that hockey in person is unbelievably beautiful because of, to my sensibilities, the physical presence of the ice. Also, the sounds, which don't really come across on TV as well. The swoosh of the skates on the ice, the knocking of the puck off the boards, the sides of the rink, the crack of the hockey sticks, putting a hard slap shot on the puck, or sticks banging into each other as players come near each other. I think that of all the sports that I've seen, hockey is the most strikingly different in person than on TV. In my own private Idaho on that?

Vincent Mercogliano: No, I think you're definitely onto something there. The sounds are tremendous. What I love about especially being at Madison Square Garden, it's usually a pretty well-formed crowd. You hear the ooze and the oz about little parts of the game that to the naked eye or to the person who's not very familiar with the game might not get picked up, but every little thing that is done on the ice, the crowd seems to react to even the Rangers fans are notorious for. The team itself is known for going for an extra pass, maybe when they have an opportunity to shoot. You'll often hear the crowd yell, "Shoot" when they want the player to just let the puck go and try to put it on the net.

It's really fun to watch in person because of how engaged the fans there are and the garden I can tell you has been electric throughout this playoff run, especially recently, I think in the first-round series, the Rangers lost three out of their first four games to the Pittsburgh Penguins. They were one loss away from elimination and the Garden crowd at that point felt nervous.

You could feel the jitters and the crowd was quiet, especially in that game five when the Rangers were facing elimination in that hole but since they've shown this heart and this grit and the way that they battle back, no matter what the deficit is, no matter what the situation is, now it's really picked back up and the fans have been tremendous in these last few home games.

Brian Lehrer: Why do they fight in hockey? I missed this part of the game, but I saw right near the end. On Wednesday night, there was some really big fight. A lot of

players got put in the penalty box for it afterwards. What happened there? Does it mean we can expect more of that in this series? Is there bad blood between the Rangers and the Tampa team? There's a lot of close contact in basketball, but they don't fight. There's a lot of close contact in football, but they don't fight. Why does it happen in hockey?

Vincent Mercogliano: Well, it's a cultural thing in hockey, for sure. Some people will look at it as barbaric. I do think that to a certain extent it does go too far sometimes, but it is ingrained in the culture of this sport. It really, there's a sense of team that's associated with it. I think when you see a situation where one or two guys are pushing and shoving, and all of a sudden everybody joins in, we were actually speaking to one of the Rangers players, Braden Schneider, who's a rookie, 20-year-old rookie about this yesterday.

He was saying that his reason for jumping into those situations is to show his teammates that when you're in a battle with somebody, or you might be physically at risk of harm, he wants to show that I have your back. I'm going to be there for you. I think that in some ways you could look at it as barbaric, but in other ways, it does create this sense of team and these guys wanting to defend each other and make sure that, there's also some message sending involved in that. These teams know it's going to be a long series. They could see each other for seven consecutive games. You're going to get to know guys, you're going to get under each other's skin.

You're going to try to send a message that you can't get away with this, or I'm going to push you around in this way. It's all kind of, its own unique game of chess in some ways, but it comes down to this has been something that's been involved in the sport for a very, very long time. I think young players coming up see that, and it feeds itself. If a young player sees these professionals who are fighting and getting into it in the way that we see on television all the time, it keeps continuing because of that. I think some people might want to see it taken out of the sport, but I have a hard time seeing it because these old-school hockey people love that part of the game.

The players themselves look at it as a way of standing up for their teammates and creating a bond that way.

Brian Lehrer: 212433 WNYC and Rocky and Inwood, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Rocky: Hey, Brian, how are you doing? I'm a long-time Ranger fan. I've been following the game since I'm a youngster. I've also been a long-time season ticket holder, and you hit the nail on the head when you said how happy Ranger of fans are right now because it's really getting exciting. It's been 28 years since our last cup. I was there the last time around. There are some real differences between this team and the team that won it in 1994. I think this team is even better, to be honest. We built around the core of young players. We developed on from the draft and on our own. I think the management has to be giving kudos all the way around, especially Gerard Gallant. He's been one of the best coaches we've ever had. Everything is clicking and now we have Shesterkin in the net. We have Adam Fox on the defense. We have Kreider and Zibanejad, and we have veteran players. We have people

playing the role, everything's fitting together and that's what you need to win the Stanley Cup.

Brian Lehrer: It's pretty exhilarating. Absolutely. If you're into it, Rocky, thank you very much. Vincent, he mentioned Shesterkin Igor, Shesterkin the goalie, tell people who may be inspired by this conversation to watch hockey on TV for the first time in game two tonight. How do you appreciate the work of a goalie? What do you look for?

Vincent Mercogliano: Well, Igor Shesterkin has been the best goalie in the NHL this season, and he is the backbone of this team. You can look at the way that the Rangers play, and there are often times when you can look at the stats sheet just quickly and see. Well, the other team had more shots than them, how do they still win the game six to two? Well, Igor in a lot of instances is the main reason for that. He's interesting from a technical perspective because the trend in the NHL in recent years has been bigger goalies, guys who can fill out the net. It makes sense. The bigger you are, the more space you're going to take up, the harder it's going to be to get a puck by you.

Igor is not a very big guy. I think he's listed at 6 foot or 6.1, but he is probably a little under that. He more is a guy who reads and reacts and gets an excellent positioning, arguably better than any goalie in the world. I've spoken to various goalies who are retired and watch, Steve Valiquette is an analyst for the MSG Network used to play for the team, and he tracks his stuff really well. They marvel at the way that he's able to assess a situation quickly, and cut down a shooting lane, or get himself into the right position to make it hard for the opposition to beat him. If you watched him early in the playoffs, he was coming off of this tremendous regular season.

He's going to win the Vezina Trophy, which is awarded to the best goalie in the NHL every season, but he had never really played in the playoffs before. He's only 26 years old. He had never even played a full NHL season because COVID had cut the previous two seasons short. He was facing a larger workload than he ever had, and he was facing the question of how are you going to handle the playoff pressure. In the early round against the Pittsburgh Penguins, and when the Rangers fell into that hole like I mentioned, he was a little shaky. They were back-to-back games in Pittsburgh where the Rangers actually took him out early because he had given up some questionable goals.

Since then, and the coach Gerard Gallant has talked about this, since then he has rebounded and gained comfort in these pressure-packed situations, and his confidence looks like it's sky-high right now. In the last round against the Carolina Hurricanes, that series went a full seven games and Igor was outstanding from game one to game seven. He did not have an off night. If you look at Carolina, which is a team that was better than the Rangers during the regular season, they largely out-possessed the Rangers and outshot them. I thought had the better of play for a lot of those games.

Igor was the difference in that series, and then he carried that into the Eastern Conference final against Tampa in game one had 37 saves in that game was

outstanding once again. The interesting thing for people who like goalies to watch in this series is Igor was the best goalie in the regular season this year, but the best goalie for the last few years in the NHL has been Andrei Vasilevskiy. Another Russian goalie who plays for Tampa, and he's won the last two Stanley Cups for Tampa.

This is for people who are big fans of the game, that's been the main source of intrigue heading into this series is that you have the guy who's been considered the best goalie in the league for the last few years against the guy who's up and coming, and a lot of people consider the best goalie right now. That's a marque matchup in this series for sure.

Brian Lehrer: Edson in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi Edson.

Edson: Hey Brian, thank you for taking my call. My question to your guest is, the hockey over here, in New York doesn't really represent the diverse that is the city. If he has any take on that?

Brian Lehrer: Hockey in general it's so white. Why does it continue to be so white?

Vincent Mercogliano: It is a very white sport. There's no disputing that. I personally think that the NHL, and hockey in general needs to do a better job of being inclusive. As far as diversity, I would say this, if you look at the Rangers roster, there are obviously American players, obviously Canadian players, but Mika Zibanejad, one of their best players is Swedish. Artemi Panarin and Igor Shesterkin are Russian, Filip Chytil is from the Czech Republic, Kaapo Kakko, who is one of their top draft picks a couple of years ago is from Finland. You will see a lot of different countries represented on the roster.

You're just not going to see a lot of color diversity, which is an area where the NHL has put some focus, but I believe that they need to do a better job. Let's be honest, hockey does have a fairly racist history. If you look at how long it took them to get a Black player in the league, I believe it wasn't until the '60s with the Boston Bruins and Willie O'Ree. Hockey itself has had a pretty bad track record of including Black players, especially, but there it is a sport that, especially when you go out to certain European countries is very popular, and if you look down the Rangers roster, you're going to see a lot of different countries represented.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Jenny in Harrison, we have about 30 seconds for you. Hi, Jenny.

Jenny: Really fast, hockey is the fastest contact sport. It's different than soccer, basketball, or football. The point is to knock opposing players off the puck. The pressure and the frustration mounts and mounts and mounts until either someone scores or the ref blows the whistle which is a whole other discussion. I just think the nature of the game is the issue with fighting more than just the tradition. The game is fast and furious, and people just get mad, and the ref didn't see it and didn't blow the whistle, and now you just-- Sticks start flying. I think it's the nature of the game. It's a very frustrating fast game.

Brian Lehrer: Jenny, thank you very much. Vincent, do you have any last word, tips for new hockey fans, if they watch the Rangers game tonight, deep into this run that you can do in 10 seconds?

Vincent Mercogliano: Well, I would just say, especially if you live in New York City, I know personally, before I had this job, I used to love going out. I lived on the Upper East Side to the second avenue bars, and it just felt like the whole city would get behind the team, and it would be electric, the atmosphere in a lot of these places. It's a fun sport to get out there and watch if you get a chance.

Brian Lehrer: Vincent Mercogliano, New York Rangers reporter and NHL analyst for the USA Today Network. Thank you so much. This was fun.

Vincent Mercogliano: No problem, Brian. Thanks.

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