Raise your hand if you ever fantasized about practicing with the Rangers and having a couple of beers with them later on.
Well, our fantasies became Gene “Scoop” Koerner’s reality as he did that and much more when he became the Blueshirts practice goalie in the 1970s.
Gene Koerner: “I grew up with Ricky and Bobby Francis, Emile’s sons, we were inseparable. We all lived in the same area of Long Beach, NY, just a few houses from each other. So I went to the games with them all the time and I got to know all the players.”
Koerner who had played hockey in high school and college, got his start as a practice goalkeeper in 1976, with a surprising phone call on a Saturday morning, after the Rangers moved their practice site from Skateland in New Hyde Park to Long Beach.
Gene Koerner: “There was an open practice one Saturday and they let the fans in, like 1,500 people showed up. I got a call from Jimmy Young, the assistant trainer. He said ‘Get your equipment and get up here. We need a goalie!’
So, I go and skate out on the ice and I know some people in the stands and they’re all cheering. John Bednarski tripped me at the blue line and says ‘Smile Scoop, you’re gona be on TV!’
After skating around, John Ferguson blew the whistle and said we’re gonna do breakaways on the goalie and I couldn’t stop anything. But then he said we’re gonna play an East-West Game, – Eastern Canada against Western Canada. I played for the west because John Davidson was down at the other end. I couldn’t believe it. I was stopping everything, until Rick Middleton blasted a slap shot right past my ear into the top corner and Pat Hickey got one later on. But we won the game 5-2 and people were mobbing me and Rod Gilbert was saying ‘This is our secret goalie! Get his autograph!’ But I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. But after that Fergy came over to me and said ‘Alright, every Monday you’re gonna be our practice goalie.’ So every Monday I was the practice goalie for about three years.”
WHO WAS THE HARDEST RANGER TO STOP?
Gene Koerner: “It had to be Espo. He was unbelievable. He could thread a needle with the puck. If he saw an opening, it went in there. He put one past me that I thought I had and I said, ‘How the hell did you do that?’ He said, ‘Hey 76 goals, I know it all.’
Ken Hodge and Nick Fotiu had the heaviest shots. It was like getting hit with a bat. Larry Sacharuk could shoot the puck at 100 mph, but he never knew where it was going, it would bang off the glass. They used to say that the safest place to be when Larry wound up for a slap shot was in the crease.”
DID YOU EVER GET ANY GOALTENDING TIPS FROM JOHN DAVIDSON, DUNC WILSON OR DOUG SOETAERT?
Gene Koerner: “JD told me to use a curved stick because it’s easier to get the puck out of the net.”
The Rangers thought so highly of Gene that they sent him to the New Haven Nighthawks of the AHL in December of 1976 to back up their starter, Paul Harrison.
Gene Koerner: “The Rangers were desperate. They had played Philadelphia back-to-back and one night John Davidson got hurt and the next night Dunc Wilson got hurt. So they had to call Dougie Soetaert up from New Haven.
I got a call from Pete Stemkowski, ‘You have to go to New Haven tonight to be the back up goalie for the Nighthawks.’ I thought he was just being funny. But then John Ferguson called me and said ‘Scoop you gotta be in New Haven tonight. Go see Parker MacDonald.’ So I said, Fergy it’s 5:30, I’m not gonna get to New Haven by 7:30, especially on a Friday night. So he called me back and told me to be at the New Haven Coliseum on Monday morning.
I went up there on Monday and practiced with them. I was there for about three weeks. I stayed with Craig Cameron and Doug Jarrett, who I knew from when he played with the Rangers the year before.
is was right around the time that ‘Slapshot’ had come out, and I thought this was typical American Hockey League, everybody was wearing plaid bell-bottom pants and flowered shirts and hanging out in a local bar with all the seventy year old regulars. But we liked it because it was quiet.“
Gene soon became part of the Rangers ‘Inner Circle’. He was given the nickname “Scoop”, by his best friend Pete Stemkowski, because due to his relationship with Emile Francis, he often knew of player moves and trades before they happened.
Scoop’s relationship with the players also led to another once in a lifetime opportunity.
Gene Koerner: “I went to all the game with Emile’s sons and later with Stemmer, Steve Vickers and Gene Carr. I walked in every night with them at five o’clock and one day Paul Popovich from the Rangers asked me if I wanted to get paid to go to the games, ‘You’re here every night anyway. We need a statistician on the radio with Marv and Sal.’ Now I grew up listening to them on the radio, so I said sure. Marv told me to keep score and write legibly. And since I was with the players so much I knew a lot of stories and passed them along to Sal. He loved them.
When I told Marv that the Rangers had sent me to New Haven in the AHL he would always bust Sal’s chops, since he was the Rangers in-house goalie for many years but never made it past the Eastern Hockey League, while the Rangers had sent me to the American League.
I did that for about three years and then I got a job with the airlines and had to give it up.”
As much as the Rangers may have opened many doors for Scoop, he paid them back by becoming a loyal and trusted friend who would do anything he could for the players and the organization.
When Ed Giacomin asked him to drive his car to Detroit, after he had been claimed by the Red Wings on waivers, Scoop did it without hesitation. And when his friendship with Gene Carr led to a chance meeting with Glenn Frey of The Eagles, Scoop took the opportunity to arrange for front row seats for many of his Ranger buddies, when the band played at The Garden.
It’s been nearly 50 years since John Ferguson tapped Scoop to be the Blueshirt’s practice goalie, but he still remains a well-established member of the Ranger family to this day. He has played in alumni games, golf tournaments, and is a welcome guest at Ranger functions. He even got to drink champagne from the Stanley Cup in 1994. Unbelievable!
Fate put Gene in the right place at the right time to live out our dreams, as well as his, and for that he is forever grateful,
“I had great times with those guys. They always treated me like one of them. I don’t regret a thing. To this day they call and ask ‘How re things at THE BEACH? Lots of great memories.”
