New york rangers st patricks day

TORONTO, ON – JANUARY 21: Reijo Ruotsalainen #29 of the New York Rangers watches the play against the Toronto Maple Leafs during game action at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on January 21, 1984. (Photo by Graig Abel Collection/Getty Images)

It’s an obscure moment in New York Rangers history, but something happened on St. Patrick’s Day in 1982 that hasn’t happened since.

It was March 17, 1982, St. Patrick’s Day, and the New York Rangers were playing the Philadelphia Flyers at Madison Square Garden.  The two teams were battling it out for second place in the Patrick Division.  Ranger goalie Steve Weeks had not been beaten in 11 games.  Center Mike Rogers had a 14-game point scoring streak, one away from setting a new team record.

But it was diminutive rookie defenseman Reijo Ruotsalainen who accomplished a feat that hasn’t been duplicated in 37 years.  That night, Ruotsalainen scored a hat trick, the last hat trick recorded in the regular season by a New York Ranger defenseman.

Only three Ranger defenseman have scored three goals in a game.  Brad Park did it three times in the 1970’s and Brian Leetch had three goals in a playoff game in 1995 against the Flyers. Ruotsalainen’s was the only by a rookie defenseman in team history and it was a natural hat trick  to boot.  He scored three consecutive goals in the second and third periods and the Rangers beat the Flyers, 5-2.

It was only the second natural hat trick by a defenseman in Ranger history.   Brad Park had a natural hat trick when he scored the first hat trick ever by a Ranger blueliner on December 12, 1971.

Reijo “Rexi” Ruotsalainen

Ruotsalainen had been drafted in the sixth round of the 1980 NHL Entry Draft.  At five foot, eight inches and 170 pounds, he was tiny by NHL standards, but he could skate like the wind and was dominant offensively playing for Karpat in the Finnish Liiga.

The Rangers thought so highly of him, that they imported another Finn, Mikko Leinonen, to keep him company. Ruotsalainen lived up to the hype, with his best season coming in 1984-85 when he had 28 goals and 73 points (he also played forward that season on a line with Mark Pavelich and Anders Hedberg).

Ruotsalainen was paired with Barry Beck and the two made quite an odd couple. Beck was six foot three inches and weighed 46 pounds more than his Finnish partner.  Coach Herb Brooks paired the two and it was an effective combination for five seasons.

Ruotsalainen left the team to play in Switzerland, the same year that Barry Beck left the team as a result of a coaching change.  When Herb Brooks was fired a replaced by Ted Sator, there was a revolt that resulted in many longtime players including Beck, Ruotsalainen and Pavelich, abandoning the team.

Ruotsalainen went on to play many years in Europe, returning to North America as a Stanley Cup playoffs rental for the Edmonton Oilers and the New Jersey Devils.  He actually won two Stanley Cups with the Oilers.  The oddity is that he played 26 regular season games over two campaigns with Edmonton, but played 43 playoff games while winning two Cups.

St. Patrick’s Day

But that brings us back to St. Patrick’s Day, 1982 and why the Ruotsalainen hat trick is ingrained in my memory. After his third goal, the fans bombarded the ice with hats.  Being St. Patrick’s Day, hundreds of green plastic top hats were among the headpieces thrown to the ice.  The indelible image that I remember is Barry Beck scooping up one of those green plastic top hats and placing it carefully on Ruotsalainen’s head as they sat on the bench waiting for the ice to be cleared.

At his peak, Reijo Ruotsalainen was compared to Paul Coffey when it came to skating ability and hardness of his shot.  If you saw him play, you know why those comparisons were legitimate.  He might have been the most talented of the Herb Brooks “smurfs”  that perpetually came up short against the New York Islanders.

It could be a long time before another Ranger defenseman gets a hat trick.  There have been 84 hat tricks this season in the NHL, none by a defenseman.  In fact, you have to go back to February 2018 to find the last hat trick by an NHL defenseman.  That was Dougie Hamilton in a 6-3 win for Calgary over Florida.

That means it’s likely that Ruotsalainen will retain the distinction for a few more years.  You could probably win a few bar bets with that bit of trivia.