These nights are bittersweet and tinged with melancholy. Oh, there is romance in the air, all right, but whenever the Rangers celebrate their heritage, whenever they raise an other-than-1994 banner to the sky, the absence of the flags that count the most are visible the way amputated limbs can create pain.
It was Vic Hadfield’s time on Sunday before the Rangers fell in a shootout loss to the Jets, time for one of only three captains in the past 68 years to lead the Blueshirts to the Cup final to have his No. 11 immortalized and raised to the pinwheel ceiling of the Garden to wave beside Jean Ratelle’s No.