The NHL Simply Cannot Let The Rangers Get To The Stanley Cup Final If MSG Loses Its Liquor License
Icon Sportswire. Getty Images.NYPost -- The State Liquor Authority has initiated proceedings that could strip Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the Beacon Theater of their liquor licenses, The Post has learned.
The agency slapped the James Dolan-owned properties with administrative charges over his banning attorneys from the venues who are in active litigation against him or the Garden, The Post has learned.
If successful, the SLA could prevent fans from enjoying a brew at Rangers and Knicks games.
We're coming down the final stretch of the 2023 NHL regular season, and clearly the Rangers are all in on a Cup Or Bust run here for the next few months. It's wild that after everything this team did in the trade market, they still only have the 6th best odds to win the Cup. They're still sitting in 3rd place in the Metro Division.
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But they traded away one of their 1st round picks in 2023 to St. Louis for Vlad Tarasenko. They could give up their 1st round pick in 2024 to Chicago if they advance to the Eastern Conference Finals. They already traded away their 2nd round pick in 2023 for Andrew Copp last year. They already traded away their 3rd round pick in 2023 for Justin Braun last year. They have less than $2,000 left in salary cap space, and they have 8 players on their current roster hitting the free agency market this summer.
Live look at the Rangers if they don't win the Stanley Cup this season:
The Rangers need this Cup run more than anybody in the league right now. If they don't at least make it to the Final, this will be a failure of biblical proportions. And yet…
The last thing the NHL can do right now is let these idiots get to the Stanley Cup Final in a barn that doesn't even allow the fans to drink some booze. Beer and hockey go together like Toronto and first round exits. They're synonymous with each other. You can't have the one without the other. So how on god's green Earth do you expect the atmosphere in the Garden to be anything even close to worthy of a Stanley Cup Final if the fans are all dead sober? You'd find a better atmosphere at a high school game in Rochester.
That would be devastating to the NHL. You can't completely waste anywhere from 2-4 of the final 7 games of the season in a dead barn like that. I don't think the league would have to do much to make sure the Rangers don't advance that far. I think they're fully capable of screwing that up on their own. But if push comes to shove and it's starting to look like there's a realistic possibility of the Rangers getting to the final series, then the NHL needs to make a business decision here. And business says that you can't have a stadium filled with sober people for a potential Cup clinching game.
So either Patty Kane becomes one of the best bootleggers in the game and sneaks enough beer into the barn for 18,000 people, or you can kiss the New York Rangers' season goodnight.
Sidenote: These are the first Stanley Cup Playoffs that we get to gas some Big Deal Brews throughout the whole thing. How lucky are we? Definitely picked the greatest era to be a hockey fan.
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