Identifying The Darkest Day In Rangers History

The date, January 23, 1944, unpleasantly lives in Rangers franchise infamy.

Ditto for goaltender Ken McAuley and don't ask me how this puckstopper – nicknamed "Tubby" – ever made it to the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.

As the Blueshirts goalie that night at Olympia Stadium in Detroit, McAuley went from sieve to SIEVE over three periods.

How about this for infamy? McAuley lost the game, 15-0, although some historians believe the score should have been higher.

Writing in his netminding classic, "Guardians Of The Goal," George Grimm noted, "The Red Wings scored their 16th goal right after the final buzzer."

Rangers chroniclers of that bygone era – including coach Frank Boucher – insist that McAuley should not be singled out as THE goat.

"Tubby," wrote Boucher in his autobiography "When The Rangers Were Young, played every one of our fifty games, yielding a record 310 goals. But only a fraction belonged to him. All of us should have shared his glory."

And that's why that wartime, roster-decimated Blueshirts club had its darkest day in franchise history.

Postscript: Then again, how dark could it have been if Tubby McAuley is in the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame?