As the collective euphoria about the Rangers hot start lingers on, there is one topic upon which Ranger fans still seem divided. That topic is the presence of one Donald Brashear. Some have readily embraced him as one of their own, while others have not, vowing they never will. Donald Brashear is not the first former antagonist to join the boys in blue. While others have gone from villain to hero seamlessly (Ulf Samuelsson comes to mind) Brashear has not. Perhaps the freshness of the Betts hit will be too much to overcome. Perhaps Brashear simply does not have the personality to be a hit in New York. Appearing aloof, he rarely gives fans a glimpse beneath the surface. A closer look at the man is revealing.

For more than 15 years Donald Brashear has led the violent life of a NHL enforcer. Known more as a fighter than a skater or scorer, Donald’s ability with his fists has never been questioned and is what put him in the NHL. What leads someone to live such a violent life? For Donald Brashear the road was long and hard.

The third child of a biracial couple, Donald began life in Bedford, Indiana. His mother Nicole, who had led her own hard life, was a product of the Quebec foster-care system. His father Johnny, a violently abusive alcoholic, would beat them both. In a scene that happened far to often, Johnny would come home drunk and angry shouting for Donald’s mother to feed him. "If I rubbed my eyes to wake up, he’d grab me by the hair and pull my out of bed saying, ‘I mean now!’ " Nicole would say. "He’d say, ‘Shut the baby up.’ If Donald didn’t stop crying, his dad would grab him by the arm and throw him across the room, He was 6 months old when that happened." Donald would receive repeated beatings from his father who would whip him with electrical cords and whatever else he could find, leaving welts and bruises all over the boy. Then, after Nicole received three consecutive beatings of her own, fearing for her life she would leave, hitchhiking her way back to Canada.

Nicole, now remarried in Quebec, would eventually return to Indiana to collect the two older siblings. However she would leave Donald, now without his brother and sister, with his father. What would cause a mother to leave her youngest child, now 18 months old, with an abusive father? The answer would come 4 years later when Donald would finally rejoin his Mother. Nicole’s new husband Gerard Roy was a man she would describe as "prejudiced" who did not want another biracial child in the family(a charge Roy denies). Donald’s new stepbrother Danny would recall a time when visiting his grandmother that Donald and his siblings, being biracial, were not permitted to use the bathroom and were forced to go outside.

At home all the children slept together in the same room except for Donald. Because of a bed-wetting problem he was isolated in a small, dark room across the hall. Donald’s stepfather would sometimes force Donald to sleep with a plastic bag tied around his waist as a solution to the bed-wetting. Danny would later say, "All you could hear was the garbage bag crinkling and Donald crying all night. I hear him crying still in my head. I kept thinking how hot and scared he must have been in there. He must have been 7, I guess. It still haunts me."

Donald’s mother would eventually give him up again, sending him into the same foster care system from which she came. Donald was 7 years old and now refused to recognize Nicole as his mother and really still doesn’t. He would briefly live in two foster homes before eventually moving to a third where Donald would say, "life really started for me." This is where Donald discovered hockey. He had to learn to skate at the age of 8, quite late for an aspiring player. Donald worked hard at his new sport and worked equally as hard at odd jobs to earn enough to continue to play.

Brashear progressed quickly in the game once scoring 38 goals and 66 points in 62 games. But when Donald dropped his gloves for the first time he was forever to be viewed as a fighter. Donald would say, "To tell you the truth, I never liked fighting. I always wanted to be the type of player that plays hard, hits, body checks and scores some goals. But that’s not what they wanted me to be." His ability to fight became widely known and he was continually challenged by players looking to make a name for themselves.

Today Donald has absolutely no contact with his family, unable to reconcile because of what happened to him as a child. His mother would say, "We’re dead to Donald. He doesn’t want any contact with us." Donald’s "family" all these years have largely been his teammates. Perhaps we can now understand why he goes to such lengths to protect them. Brashear says, "Somewhere, inside, there’s a little part of me, maybe 1 out of 100 percent, that I know I have my real parents. I didn’t live with them. I didn’t grow up with them. But somewhere I would like to have my own family. I didn’t have the family I wanted to have growing up. And that’s all I wanted."

Brashear was mistreated by his father and stepfather, and abandoned twice by his mother. The road that led Donald to New York was long, painful and hard. But maybe, ...  just maybe, he has finally come home. Donald is now part of a new family - the Rangers family. Being a part of this "family" has always had a different, deeper meaning than with other teams. The Ranger faithful embrace their team in a way that is unique to New York and lasts long after a player’s career. "Once a Ranger always a Ranger." 

Donald Brashear overcame incredible obstacles to succeed as a professional athlete. It is a story to which New York fans should strongly connect - and he is now a Ranger. Hopefully Ranger fans will show Donald what that really means, and how deep Ranger Blue really runs. After all, "Once a Ranger always a Ranger. "

Welcome home Donald. Peace.

* * *

Author’s note:

• The bulk of the source material for this piece was borrowed (heavily) from the great article by Matt Wise of the Washington Post. Read Matt’s full article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/01/AR2009050104147.html

Other Items of Interest:

• Donald’s great uncle was Carl Brashear, the first black master diver in U.S. Naval history. He was portrayed by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the 2000 film "Men of Honor"
• Mike Wise also did an interesting little video on Brashear making an appearance at a local DC rink http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/04/23/VI2009042302681.html?sid=ST2009050104383
• Brashear suffered a grade 3 concussion when he was struck in the head by the stick of Marty Mc Sorley in what some consider one of the worst acts of violence in NHL history. Mc Sorley was found guilty of Assault with a Weapon and never played another game. Brashear states he still has no memory of the incident. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnP18StCoHA

With the Rangers off to such a promising start, much attention has been paid to all the new players, and rightfully so; but what of this new coach? Despite a short stint at the end of last year he is also new. So who is John Tortorella really, and what mark will he make on the Rangers?

For the moment lets see past the fiery personality - that most don't bother to look behind - to find the man and the coach. Perhaps best known as the coach of the Tampa Bay Lighting, Tortorella took a moribund franchise and turned it into a Champion. But he also did something that was less tangible perhaps, but no less remarkable. His former GM Jay Feester had this to say: "He did something I think is very, very difficult for anyone to do, but certainly difficult for a coach to do. That's change the culture...this was a country club, a retirement home. It was a place players came to retire...John came in and changed the culture, changed the way we do business, and the ATTITUDE. And in doing, he raised expectations".  While much has been made of how he challenged the face-of-the-franchise - Vinny Lecavalier, not enough has been made of the fact he turned a perennial last place team into a club that made the playoffs in 4 of his 6 years and won a cup.

What does this portend for the Rangers? His words at the opening of this year's camp were interesting. " We need a different culture here. "We're not out to injure them. But you find out about where people are through activity, anxiety and the situations you put them through, and at the end you see if you have someone who is ready to be a Ranger."

Ready to be a Ranger! When has that question been asked so forcefully, so directly, and in equal measure to rookies and millionaires alike, by a coach of the Rangers? I submit to you that the phrase "ready to be a Ranger" now has a different meaning in New York.

If you listen closely you can already hear John Tortorella making his mark on this team.  Consistently during interviews his players speak of ‘the process" and of "embracing success".  Perhaps a nebulous term, "the process" is something Tortorella passionately believes in.  In the Christian Klemash book "How To Succeed in the Game of Life", Tortorella describes "the process" like this: "There's always a process ... to be successful. " He goes on, "...success is looking at the ultimate goal, setting your goal as a team or an individual, going through the process of the ups and downs of trying to attain that goal, and finally getting it done." Failure, Tortorella said, was " allowing the process to beat you."  When Tortorella speaks of "the process" you can hear echoes of John Wooden telling his teams "there are no shortcuts to success." More importantly this team is listening and "getting it."

On the desk of Coach Tortorella sits a piece of crystal engraved with the following phrase: " Dare to Do what you Dare to Dream."  Perhaps this phrase, more than any other, encapsulates the man. There is no back down in Tortorella, no compromising on commitment, no wavering from the goal, no fear of success. These are traits he attempts to instill in his teams.  Make no mistake; he is not here to put up a good fight or to earn respectability.  He is here to win.  To teach these men under his charge how to navigate "the process" of becoming champions in life and hockey, while daring to do what they dare to dream.  So as this season unfolds with all its ups and downs, watch closely and listen intently for the echoes of John Tortorella in his player's actions and his player's words. Something new is emerging here.

We are all just starting "this process" together but you can already feel (and hear) the culture starting to change. On Sunday October 11th in a 3-0 win over the Ducks, this team got a glimpse of what it can be. The faithful got a glimpse too. Certainly there will also be challenging times ahead - but that's the point. It's all part of the process. Embrace the success. Now is the time to dare to dream, to dare to do.  Break free of the ghosts of seasons past spent waiting for the other shoe to drop and embrace success. Do you dare to dream? Do you dare to do? Are you on-board? Or as Coach Tortorella would put it; ARE YOU READY TO BE A RANGER?

It is often said that great men are a product of their times. The logic being that only the trials of life's greatest challenges can truly make men great. This is equally true in a hockey sense.  Hockey men become great by predicting season-saving victories and then delivering hat tricks. In the movie "The Contender" Gary Oldman's character said the following: "Greatness is the orphan of urgency . . . Greatness only emerges when we need it most... in time of war or calamity. I can't ask somebody to be a Kennedy or a Lincoln. They were MEN created by their times. What I can ask for... is the promise of greatness".

When we look at these new, young Rangers, it is patently unfair to expect greatness from any of them. These kids have yet to be tested on their own fields of battle, but in any of them; can we see the "promise of greatness"?

Matt Gilroy came to the NHL with all the credentials of a "great" player. The Captain of the NCAA National Champion and the recipient of college hockey's version of the Heisman, the Hobey Baker Award.  Matt's road to the NHL was like most in a lot of ways. Youth hockey in distant rinks at on-godly hours, Prep school teams then a walk-on at BU, he earned his way along. While this is repeated countless times, by countless kids playing this great game there must have been a little extra driving Matt.

The Gilroy's are an athletic family, the father Frank a member of the St. John's University Basketball Hall of Fame.  Matt and his brother Timmy who were only 13 months apart, started out together in youth hockey with Timmy wearing #97 and Matt #98.  When Timmy was just short of his 8th birthday, and while heading for a game on his bicycle, he was involved in an accident and died from a head injury.  In his room that night, through unimaginable grief, Matt vowed to wear Timmy's #97 from then on. He has proudly carried that number 97 from the 5am youth games, to one of the finest college hockey programs in the country, and now into the NHL.

So as that blue #97 streaks down the ice in the worlds greatest arena and lights the lamp, look up to the rafters and give a quick nod to Timmy. Then firmly fix your eyes on the current 97 and bear witness to the promise of greatness - now fulfilled.  For if it is true that "greatness only emerges when we need it most", those times are not confined to the battlefields or sports arenas, sometimes it is the bedroom of a young Matt Gilroy on the hardest day of his life.  His promise has already been kept. 

After reading xcdudesquad's excellent post on why to be excited about this year’s team, I began to think about all the questions that remain unanswered about this group. Now by way of disclaimer let me emphatically state that I to am optimistic about the upcoming season. Let me re-state that; I am optimistic about this year’s team! However a dis-passionate evaluation reveals there really are more questions than answers.  Here are my top ten questions to ponder (objectively) as this season rolls along. There are many more – add your own.

Top Ten Questions About the Rangers Entering This Season:

Continue reading this post »