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Main Event: Penguins-Rangers
Sports Illustrated hockey writer Kostya Kennedy checks in each Thursday with a look ahead to intriguing weekend matchups. To send a question or comment, click here. Pittsburgh at New York Rangers, Sunday, April 18, 3 p.m. ET Game of the week? This is the most significant regular season game in modern NHL history. Wait until you hear the crowd in Madison Square Garden. Wait until Wayne Gretzky comes out for the pre-game skate. They'll be standing then, Rangers fans and hockey fans and everyone else who comes for this day, this happening, to stand jammed-in, shoulder-to-shoulder, and watch a hockey game that is about nothing but one man. Fans in New York will never appreciate Gretzky the way fans in Edmonton or Toronto do. But they love him just the same -- the man is an EVENT -- and Manhattan will give him a sendoff like no place else could. You want to hear noise? Wait until he swings over the boards for a late shift, wait until he touches the puck. Heaven help the welding in the rafters, and heaven help our eardrums, if he scores a goal. You can bet the Penguins are feeling this, just like the Senators did on Thursday night when they cheered Gretzky in the third period. On Sunday Gretzky will bid adieu to Pittsburgh's Jaromir Jagr . Forget a stick, Gretz, hand him a baton when the final buzzer sounds. Not that anyone could ever seriously pick up where Gretzky leaves off. Not that you'll be able to hear the final buzzer anyway, not over the crowd. On Thursday in Ottawa when the game was 10 minutes over and the crowd stood defiantly in the stands and cheered for Gretzky -- a tame but deeply heartfelt tribute -- ESPN cut back to its studio analysts. Viewers missed the best moment of the night: The fans refusing to leave, long after it was time to go home. Here's hoping that for the sake of those who don't make it to Sunday's game, those of you who'll be tuning in to Fox, that the network analysts leave this one alone. Entrust this day to your cameramen. The volume of the crowd, Gretzky's expressions -- his sighs and grimaces -- the looks on the faces of his wife and children; the sight of the Rangers and Penguins banging their sticks on the ice in appreciation. Silence will become those scenes best of all. Whatever ceremonies are planned, whatever unfolds on the ice, this much is certain: On Sunday you will see the emotion of an entire farewell tour crammed into one afternoon, and you will see Wayne Gretzky handle all of it with his incomparable mixture of humility and understanding and graciousness. You will feel his strength and his vulnerability and years later you will remember how Gretzky appeared on this day. The world's greatest hockey player, saying goodbye from center stage, in the
heart of Manhattan. Don't miss
it.
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