Here’s one guarantee: Mark Messier knows what it takes to win the Stanley Cup.
Having hoisted the most prized possession in hockey up over his head six times during his career — including in 1994, when he did it as captain of the Rangers team that broke their 54-year championship drought — Messier takes a look at the current Blueshirts roster, in the midst of a 8-2-0 run following Tuesday night’s 3-1 triumph in Vancouver, and likes what he sees.
“They’re definitely playing well at the right time of year,” Messier told The Post over the phone, as he began a day of media spots to promote his new business association with Can-Am Spyder. “I think that after a tough start, they’ve really come together as a team. They’re an exciting team to watch right now, they’re playing a good brand of hockey. They seem to be firing on all cylinders right now, getting a lot of contributions from a lot of different players.”
Messier called the Ryan Callahan-Martin St. Louis trade “unfortunate” and a result of “the salary-cap era.” He emphasized the Blueshirts’ ability to roll four lines as integral to postseason success, yet when asked the obligatory question about their chances to win the Cup, he laughed before giving an endorsement.
“You’re right, it’s impossible to answer,” he joked. “It would start in goal, and Henrik [Lundqvist] is playing great right now. They have a lot of balance in their attack right now, and their defense is as stable as there is in the league, so I give them a great chance.”
Messier was passed over this summer for the job as head coach of this team. Working as a consultant for the organization and knowing he had little to no coaching experience, Messier encouraged general manager Glen Sather to go out and interview as many people as need be, and he does not hold any resentment toward Sather or the man they hired, Alain Vigneault.
“Not at all, not at all,” Messier said when asked if there was any bitterness. “I was the one who asked the Rangers to make sure they go and do their due diligence and interview people and make sure they feel comfortable with the person they hire. So that’s what they did and they felt the direction they went was the better direction and I completely respect that.”
The 53-year-old says that his focus now is “100 percent” on the building of Kingsbridge National Ice Center, a nine-rink facility in The Bronx that has been approved by the city council and is set to break ground in 2015. Messier is also a paid consultant for the Oilers, with whom he won his first five Stanley Cups from 1984 to 1990.
Yet he said Kingsbridge is still his main focus, calling it a “five-year project.” If coaching was something he wanted to get into, he implied it would have to wait.
“I see [Kingsbridge] as an unbelievable platform to grow the game of hockey and to help kids with new entry into the sport who never had the opportunity because of economics or just the sheer lack of ice in the New York area,” he said. “I’m completely committed for the next five years to make sure this happens and gives everybody a chance. So up until then, it’s hard to have those [coaching] conversations.”
The whimsical commercial got his wife to have a quick flashback when she saw it.
“She went, ‘Oh, no, not this story again!’ ” Messier said. “Then it broke into the other stuff there, which she thought was very creative and she loved it.”