Submitted by LETSGORANGERS July 17th, 2006

Several years ago, I went to see the Rangers play in Tampa, because I knew they would stay in the hotel right across from the arena. So I went with my girlfriend at the time and we took her niece, we all got there very early, so we could catch the players walking across the street to practice. We met several of the players, Barnaby, Blackburn, Nedved, and Bure, to name a few, we took pictures and got autographs. We even met Sam and JD, and got to chat with them a while. 

We really wanted to meet Messier, but we saw he had taken a bus back and forth from the hotel to the arena. He was on the bus with some of the more popular players, such as Leetch, Richter and Fleury. So we were kind of bummed out and walked back to the hotel lobby. When we got to the entrance we were pleasantly surprised, we could see in through the vestibule windows the back of a bald man in a suit. 

We rushed in and ran through the lobby and up to the gentlemen, flabbergasted expecting to meet the Captain. The startled gentleman herd us coming like a stampede, he turned around only to see us even more shocked, and disappointed. It was Sylvan Lefebvre, we politely said never mind, and saw Rem Murray laughing, because he could see that we obviously thought the bald man we saw from out side the hotel was Messier. We asked Rem if he knew where Mess was he shook our hands and shook his head no. He was a nice guy and got a kick out of our enthusiasm to meet the storied leader. 

We never did run into Mr. Messier, but all the players we met were very nice and we got a birds eye view of the team in warm ups. Nedved gave us a puck, and Fluery and Mess, acknowledged all the Rangers fans that were in attendance. 

We enjoyed the game it was a good one, the Rangers won, and Samuelsson, gouged Lecavalier’s eye out in a fight. We ran into Vinny and company later that night and they were pissed, I said good game, with a huge smile on my face. 

I look forward to doing it again, Tampa is a good place to go meet the players, as my story tells most of them will just walk across the street, to get to practice. Too bad Our great leader did not that day.