These days, when the Rangers players clock into work, their job is to capture the Stanley Cup. And if they beat the Penguins on Friday night, they will advance to the next round of the playoffs, one step closer to the hallowed trophy.
But before they ever donned blue jerseys and skated at Madison Square Garden, they were just teenage working stiffs like the rest of us.
Defenseman Marc Staal, who grew up on a sod farm in Ontario, Canada, got his first marching orders from his father. “Whenever we weren’t playing hockey, we were working on the farm laying sod,” says Staal, who has three brothers who also play the sport. “After school, we’d go to the farm and work. In the summers, we’d wake up early and lay sod all day long.
“It was not an easy job — we all had different duties. I learned the meaning of hard work at a very early age,” adds the 28-year-old.
Here, other Rangers reveal their first jobs — ranging from back-breaking labor to rubbing elbows with finance titans — all of which solidified their ferocious work ethic. Check them out in the gallery below:
