Dec. 29, 1964 - General manager Emile Francis and his Rangers have almost certainly come upon their Waterloo. Francis stood, his foot propped up on a rubbing table, in Madison Square Garden last night. His Grand Army on skates had just met another defeat, their ninth in the last 10 games. It was another hard day’s night for Emile, and the stress showed in his face.
“If there were anybody better in the organization, we would bring him up,” Emile said after Bobby Hull and the Black Hawks defeated the Blues, 4-2. “We’re always looking, and we wouldn’t hesitate to make a change as long as it was for the better.”
Francis, ever looking at the brighter side of things, tried to cheer coach Red Sullivan, who doesn’t always see the light. “Well, only one more chance to win a game this year,” Emile said. But even there, Francis was wrong. The Rangers have played their final game of 1964, which came in during October like a New Deal and went out like another Depression.
Playing against Bobby Hull is not the best way to break a slump. Bobby scored two goals tonight and now has 31 in 32 games. At this rate, he will break the NHL goal-scoring record of 50 by February.
Not all the “Get Hull” chants from all the stupid fans in all the jam-packed arenas of the NHL are going to mean a thing to Hull who, like Old Man River and the New York Central, just keeps rolling along. He may turn out to be the best human being ever to lace on a pair of skates. Even Gordie Howe never scored goals like this, and Hull is seemingly forever passing up scoring chances to pass off to his teammates.
In the meantime, Ranger fans must suffer. But the management won’t. Those fans filled the Garden to its complete capacity of 15,925 again tonight, for the second time in four days.
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