30 years later, Stephane Matteau and Howie Rose still connected by call of Rangers' series-clinching goal

Thirty years has not changed the bond Stephane Matteau and Howie Rose share.

Instead, in the three decades that passed since they won the Stanley Cup has only deepened and strengthened the relationship.

“My name will always be linked to his name and vice versa,” Matteau said prior to a panel discussion at the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan Thursday night about Rose’s iconic “Matteau Matteau Matteau,” call for WFAN.

Joining Matteau was Rose, Adam Graves, Mike Richter, Pierre Turgeon, and Jim Dowd. Matteau, Richter, and Graves were members of the 1993-94 Rangers, whose games Rose called for WFAN.

Turgeon, whose Islander team the Rangers swept in the first round, is a childhood friend of Matteau’s. Dowd was a center on the Devils team whom the Rangers eliminated on Matteau’s double-overtime wraparound goal in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final.

Monday will mark the 30th anniversary of the goal which propelled the Rangers to a Stanley Cup Final matchup against the Vancouver Canucks. The Rangers won that series in seven games, and in doing so captured the franchise’s first Stanley Cup since 1940.

“The goal was the greatest single moment of euphoria in Ranger history. We say that now in my opinion because they went on to win the Cup,” Rose said. “It was the biggest link in the chain that enabled them to win the Cup.”

Ironically, Rose worried in the moments after the call that he may have misidentified the goal scorer.

“For those who don’t know, our broadcast location was right above what we call the Willis Reed tunnel,” Rose said as Matteau stood to his left, listening intently. “Generally that was not a great location because it was too far down. Really in an ideal sense, (you’d) like to be a little higher up. But your powers of concentration as a broadcaster are so acute and so sharp in that situation that . . . my eyes were almost magnetically glued to the puck.

“So it wasn’t until after I finished yelling his name a thousand times and watching the replay that it even occurred to me that (Esa) Tikkanen might have gotten the goal. When Sal Messina is breaking the play down on radio, he’s going in his own inimitable way, ‘I don't know if that's Matteau’s goal. That could have been Esa Tikkanen.’ I’m thinking “Oh (expletive), now I’ve got to go into a studio and overdub ‘Tikkanen, Tikkanen, Tikkanen,’ which obviously didn’t happen.”

Revenues generated from the event, which included a memorabilia auction, were going to be donated to the Stephane Matteau Foundation and Mount Sinai Hospital Department of Urology on Rose’s behalf.

In 2021, Rose was diagnosed with bladder cancer which was treated with a radical cystoprostatectomy procedure.

“We try to raise as much as possible,” Matteau said.