Remembering the Rangers’ 1994 Trade Deadline, the wildest of all-time

One week out from the March 8 NHL Trade Deadline, we continue to deliver at least one deadline-focused story per day on Daily Faceoff.

Today, we revisit the wildest Trade Deadline in NHL history as its 30^th anniversary approaches. In 1994, a first-place New York Rangers team made a flurry of bold moves that has never been equalled.

2024 NHL Trade Deadline Countdown: 7 days

“You have to know Mike Keenan was a very difficult guy to work with. And he thought everybody he had in Chicago was better than who we had on New York.”

The 1993-94 New York Rangers held down first place, not just in Atlantic Division, but in the entire NHL, as of late March 1994. They were loaded with future Hall of Famers, from captain Mark Messier to defensemen Brian Leetch, Sergei Zubov and Kevin Lowe. Adam Graves was on his way to setting a franchise record with 52 goals. Their supporting weapons included iron man Steve Larmer and dynamic young forward Alexei Kovalev. Starting goaltender Mike Richter was at the peak of his powers. This team was absolutely stacked.

But all was not right. The Rangers’ dressing room was a cohesive place, but their front office was not. Team president and general manager Neil Smith and coach ‘Iron’ Mike Keenan fit together about as well as peanut butter and tuna fish. The Blueshirts were dominant, but, as Smith recalls it to Daily Faceoff three decades later, Keenan was never satisfied with his group.

That shouldn’t come as a big surprise given it’s ‘Iron’ Mike Keenan we’re talking about. He was John Tortorella before social media and viral soundbites. Keenan was the toughest, most menacing and impossible to please bench boss of his era.

“Keenan’s was approach was: distrust but verify,” Richter told Daily Faceoff with a laugh. “ ‘You’ve got to prove to me whether you have the mettle.’ He challenged everybody all the time, every day in every way, and you were going to react to that in his eyes or not.”

It wasn’t a surprise that Keenan, with his incredibly high standards, felt someone was letting him down. It was surprising who that someone was. Mike Gartner was the team’s second-leading goal scorer that season. He was 638 goals into a 708-goal Hall of Fame career. He was still the NHL’s fastest skater. Yet he could do no right in Keenan’s eyes.

“He just wasn’t a Gartner fan. I don’t know what it was,” Smith said. “Maybe there was something personal there. Maybe Keenan didn’t think Mike Gartner drank the Kool-Aid.”

“ ‘Garts’ was such a good professional but…I remember a few times [Keenan] mispronounced Garts’ name on the bench and relative to [Keenan], you never knew if it was intentional or not,” Lowe told Daily Faceoff.

Also in Keenan’s crosshairs: 23-year-old right winger Tony Amonte. He’d finished as the 1991-92 Calder Trophy runner-up and had eclipsed 30 goals in each of his first two NHL seasons but was laboring through a disappointing third year, stuck on 16 goals in 72 games, a particularly inferior number considering none of the 29 NHL seasons since have averaged as many goals per game as 1993-94.

First place or not, Keenan wasn’t budging when it came to Gartner and Amonte.

“Certain guys felt like they were maybe picked on, but I think he did it so across the board that it wasn’t glaring,” Richter said. “I can’t tell you what was going through his head at every moment, but he would look at a player and say, ‘I’m gonna push every button I can and see how these guys react. We’re going into the most important time of year, and if I don’t like your reaction, I’m not going to put up with it.’ Some people react well to that and some people don’t. His mind may have been made up on certain players, or opportunistically, hey, someone’s come up on the trading block and I don’t care what I’m giving up. I’m getting this guy because I know him.”

Keenan had coached the Chicago Blackhawks from 1988-89 through 1992-93, taking them to the Stanley Cup Final in ’92, and was in Smith’s ear all season wanting him to snatch two big, physical third-line grinders from Chicago in Stephane Matteau and Brian Noonan.

“I just knew we needed to add some depth to the team,” Smith said. “And had a coach who was b----ing about certain players, no matter how much we won, no matter how much they scored.”

As the March 21 trade deadline approached, the Rangers were the classic duck analogy, riding the water smoothly on the surface but turbulent beneath. Wanting to deepen his roster and placate his insatiable coach, Smith got to work.

“Mike Keenan doesn’t sit idly if he’s got an opportunity, and he was pushing our GM, and our GM had been able to make a lot of trades and some pretty bold ones,” Richter said. “So you came in there feeling like a lot of the rumors that were swirling around were probably based in reality. There’s going to be some adjustments made to that lineup. Again, you’re in first place. How much is it going to be? I don’t think anybody anticipated the number and quality of moves that took place.”

And so began the most memorable one-day overhaul of a Stanley Cup contender in history.

Luckily for Smith, even while running a first-place outfit in a major market, he had little ownership interference to worry about. There was no hockey-nut billionaire looming over their precious team and demanding a hand in personnel decisions. The mega conglomerate Viacom owned the Blueshirts and its leadership was detached enough to give Smith carte blanche.

First came the “shut Keenan up” trade. Keenan was so dead set on shipping out Amonte and landing Matteau, Smith says, that Keenan would’ve done the deal one for one. But Smith firmly believed Amonte would become a star in the NHL and wouldn’t make the deal with Blackhawks GM Bob Pulford straight up. They settled on what was essentially a 2 for 1, with Amonte and prospect Matt Oates heading to Chicago for Matteau and Noonan.

Next came the jaw-dropper. Gartner was still seeking his first Stanley Cup in his 15^th season, and Smith decided New York needed more championship experience, so he called up Toronto Maple Leafs GM Cliff Fletcher and arranged a swap of future Hall of Famers. Gartner went to the Leafs for Glenn Anderson, who had won five Stanley Cups playing on Messier’s line with the Edmonton Oilers dynasty.

“Toronto was having a really good season that year, but it was an era in which…it was early in the UFA process,” Smith said. “It’s not like now where every team has a certain number of guys who are going to be UFAs in the summer. The older guys only became UFAs. You had to be over 30 and have an expiring contract. So Mike Gartner had two years on his contract, and Glenn Anderson had none. And it was very appealing to a manager if they could get back a guy with term on his contract for a guy with no term.”

So off Gartner went, and Keenan’s two big trade wishes were granted. ‘Big Deal Neil’ wasn’t done, though. It was time to chase down the deal he’d been eyeing all season. His rapport with Oilers GM Glen Sather was already strong given he had already acquired Messier, Jeff Beukeboom, Lowe and Esa Tikkanen from Sather across three trades in the previous two years, and Smith wasn’t done collecting Oiler dynasty pieces. He craved a big shutdown center. Craig MacTavish was his guy. So he sent a promising, speedy prospect in Todd Marchant to Edmonton in a one-for-one swap.

So in a matter of hours, the first-place Rangers overhauled four of their 12 forward slots. The way Smith saw it, since only Gartner and Amonte were gone from the starting lineup, receiving four impact players, with nine combined Stanley Cup rings, constituted a significant an overall upgrade.

“I’d also solved the issue that I always think about, which is, ‘Take away all their excuses,’ ” Smith said. “I don’t want any excuses that, ‘We didn’t win because you made me play Gartner, because Amonte wasn’t ready for the playoffs.’ Because once that deadline’s over, my job is pretty much done. There’s nothing I can do after the deadline. So that was my thinking then.”

No matter how exciting the quartet coming in was, the trades rocked the dressing room. When you turn over so many names, no matter how good the newcomers may be, you’re never sure what the chemistry change will be.

“So there is always an unknown and a downside no matter how good or bad your team is,” Richter said. “The biggest one we all saw: we were a very tight crowd. Everybody loved Tony, everybody loved Michael, and so there was a loss in terms of personality no matter what happened on the ice. And don’t forget, you don’t get great players without giving something up. Gartner and Amonte were great players. They proved it before, during and after that time. But the cruel part about sports in general is that timing and what the management group determines is needed, at that moment doesn’t always take into account how good you are or what kind of guy you are. It’s just, ‘Look, we have three fast wingers, we need a strong center. Boom, you’re gone.’ Doesn’t mean you’re not a good player. It’s just what fits in that locker room for their vision.”

“I often wonder, many years later – not that Andy [Anderson] didn’t do his part – you never know, you can never tell with body language and chemistry, if Garts couldn’t be a part of that,” Lowe said. “I don’t know why he couldn’t. He was a good guy and good player. I wanted to say that in fairness to him. But for us, the room for me particularly became much more familiar. All of us, heads down, getting the job done, ‘We know how to do this,’ and you’re not really worrying about what the other players are doing, because you know they’re doing their job.”

The new additions ended up fitting seamlessly. Matteau scored the tying goal in his first regular-season game. With the Rangers’ leadership group already so strong and established, Richter explained, Matteau, Noonan, Anderson and MacTavish didn’t barge in the door trying to rock the boat. They understood they were joining a closely bonded team late and wanted to complement that group in any way possible.

There was still some nervousness about Smith’s decision to fix something that, on paper, wasn’t broke. Every Ranger who was part of the pre-Oiler contingent felt an added degree of pressure to perform, especially after gaining Anderson and MacTavish on deadline day, Lowe said. And when the playoffs rolled around and some pundits claimed the New York Islanders were a scary draw for the Rangers, Smith admits he was rattled. But the Blueshirts took Games 1 and 2 of that series 6-0 and 6-0 and were off and running.

Every one of Smith’s deadline-day catches played crucial roles en route to New York ending a 54-year championship drought. Matteau’s jubilant double-overtime Game 7 winner over the New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference final needs little description. It’s one of the most iconic goals in hockey history. But he, Noonan Anderson also combined to score five of the Rangers’ 16 game-winning goals that spring. MacTavish won the defensive zone face-off with 1.6 seconds remaining as the Rangers held on to beat the Vancouver Canucks by a goal in Game 7.

What makes Smith the proudest looking back isn’t simply that all the moves he made worked out. It’s that he had the gall to execute them in the first place. Now 70, he feels like he’s reminiscing about someone else.

“I can’t imagine that guy we’re talking about has the balls do that,” Smith said. “Would I have the balls today to do that again? I don’t think so. I can’t imagine that how that f-----’ guy did that.”

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Mike Keenan did not respond to a request to participate in this story.