Stan Fischler is flanked by producer Glenn Petraitis, left, and co-host Peter Ruttgaizer at the Nassau Coliseum set of their pregame and postgame shows. (Hillel Kuttler)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThe Hockey Maven,\u201d as Fischler has long been known, has a love affair, too, with Israel. He and his wife, Shirley, visit there each summer. And their younger son, Simon, now 35, lives on Kibbutz El Rom in the Golan Heights and blogs on diplomacy while also writing for Fischler\u2019s hockey newsletter.<\/p>\n
Simon, not surprisingly, taught the sport to his children at the ice rink in nearby Metulla.<\/p>\n
He recalls his father asking him when he was 8 to find Israel on an atlas. The boy couldn\u2019t, so dad pointed it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was one of my earliest memories: This is our land,\u201d said Simon, who lives on the kibbutz with his wife and three children. \u201cI thank him every day for it because I am extremely proud of my Jewish national heritage. It\u2019s why I live in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fischler says his mother, Molly, losing nearly all her relatives in the Holocaust in the former Czechoslovakia helps explain why his support of Jewish causes \u201crevolves around the security of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was his mother — \u201cMalka Devorah, I love that name; it\u2019s very lyrical,\u201d he says \u2013 who introduced 5-year-old Stan, her only child, to spectator sports, a Brooklyn Dodgers game they attended at Ebbets Field.<\/p>\n
But two years later it was his father, Benjamin, who would bring Fischler to his first hockey game. They were intending to see \u201cSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs,\u201d but emerging from the subway into torrential rain at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue, where Madison Square Garden then stood, the plans changed.<\/p>\n
\u201cForget it,\u201d said Benjamin, a big-time sports fan, in spurning the film, Fischler recalled. \u201cWe\u2019ll go to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Rangers\u2019 minor league team, the Rovers, was taking on the Washington Eagles, and the bawling boy was hooked. After each Rovers game, Fischler would write a recap in his souvenir program. A hockey writer was born.<\/p>\n
Several years later, at 10, Fischler first saw the real Rangers play. A sign in the Garden\u2019s rotunda touting hockey as \u201cThe Fastest Game in the World,\u201d along with the magical brew of indoor ice, sticks and skating, \u201creally made an impression on me,\u201d Fischler said.<\/p>\n
Fischler would handle public relations for the Rangers, then work 20 years as a newspaper reporter before moving into broadcasting, first for the World Hockey Association\u2019s New England Whalers and then the New York-area teams in the National Hockey League.<\/p>\n
The opinionated broadcaster has won multiple Emmy Awards and, in 2007, the NHL\u2019s Lester Patrick Trophy for advancing American hockey.<\/p>\n
His love and knowledge of the game are apparent in the pregame and postgame shows he co-hosts for the New York area\u2019s NHL teams on the MSG Network.<\/p>\n
His producer, Glenn Petraitis, says Fischler has retained \u201cthe passion of a young person.”<\/p>\n
\u201cHe obviously lives, eats and sleeps hockey,\u201d Petraitis said. \u201cHe\u2019s a passionate sports fan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fischler just had his 100th book on the sport published. \u201cWe Are the Rangers\u201d is an oral history of the team that tugged at Fischler\u2019s heart as a boy growing up in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
Some of the books were co-authored with Shirley, with whom he lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (Their elder son, Ben, lives in Portland, Ore.) His subjects have included Hall of Fame players such as Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Stan Mikita and Rod Gilbert. Others have been on coaches, teams, great moments and rivalries.<\/p>\n
Fischler also has written well-received books on New York’s transit system and the old trolley lines in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
The epilogue of the new book tells of Simon needing a heart transplant in 1993. Fischler movingly writes of the Rangers’ then-coach and goalie, Mike Keenan and Mike Richter, visiting his son — a diehard fan of the Islanders, the Rangers\u2019 bitter rivals.<\/p>\n
Unwritten was what Gilbert told JTA: He also had come to the hospital, where he and Simon, sitting alone, discussed hockey and prayer.<\/p>\n
That evening, an emotional Fischler phoned Gilbert, a friend since the player\u2019s debut in 1960, with the news that a donor heart had become available.<\/p>\n
\u201cCall it coincidence, call it energy or whatever you want,\u201d Gilbert said. \u201cI was very grateful that he did successfully get a transplant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Told of Gilbert\u2019s comments, Fischler says the visit came when Simon\u2019s condition was dire.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did attach something positive to Rod Gilbert\u2019s visit. Rod was basically doing some preaching, some talking about getting through his [own] medical experiences,” Fischler said. “When you\u2019re in a situation like that, you welcome any source of hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another source was praying at the family synagogue on West 110th Street.<\/p>\n
The crisis wasn\u2019t discussed on-air.<\/p>\n
Viewers tune in to hear Fischler opine and inform on hockey \u2013 the sport he adored alone among his childhood pals in Williamsburg.<\/p>\n
Fans strolling the Nassau Coliseum concourse during the Islanders-Bruins game stopped by the white picket fence delineating the set where Petraitis, Fischler and the broadcast\u2019s other co-host, Peter Ruttgaizer, ply their trade.<\/p>\n
They seek out Fischler to banter, ask questions and pose for photographs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou turn on MSG and there\u2019s Stan,\u201d said Kyle Hall, 25, after taking a picture with Fischler. \u201cI only know things are true if Stan says so. He\u2019s knowledgeable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preparing for the pregame show, Fischler says, \u201cIt never stops being exciting because you never know what\u2019s going to happen from game to game.\u201d<\/p>\n
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