
"Brian Mullen would have The Garden to himself for about an hour before Rangers home games. A decade before he donned the blue, red, and white of his hometown team, he shared the same rink as his idols at the time the Ooh la la team, he recalled, as several players were in the famous Sasson jeans commercial that regularly aired in the New York area."
"Hell's Kitchen was a great place to grow up for the Mullen boys. Brian had three older brothers, Ken, Tom, and Joe. They lived across the street from a schoolyard, where they played roller hockey every day after school from 3 p.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. 'My mom always knew where I was,' Mullen said. 'She just had to look out the window and see me across the street in the school yard.'"
"The Mullen boys idolized the Rangers' famed GAG (goal-a-game) line Jean Ratelle flanked by Rod Gilbert and Vic Hadfield. When they played hockey in the schoolyard, the boys emulated the Rangers' legends. One [brother] wanted to be Vic Hadfield, Mullen said. One wanted to be Rod Gilbert. One wanted to be Jean Ratelle. We'd play in that school yard all the time, and you'd hear guys yelling out, Gilbert scores!'"
Brian Mullen grew up in Hell's Kitchen near Madison Square Garden III, where his father worked on the ice-making crew. As a teenager he served as a New York Rangers stick boy, arriving early to skate the Garden with a bag of pucks and having the rink largely to himself before home games. He and his three older brothers played roller hockey daily in a nearby schoolyard, emulating the Rangers' famed GAG line of Jean Ratelle, Rod Gilbert, and Vic Hadfield. His father once took him onto the old Garden ice and gave him a Vic Hadfield stick.
Read at www.amny.com
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