Stanley Cup Playoffs postcard: Arlington, Virginia

NHL.com writers will be sending postcards from the eight first-round series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Today, staff writer William Douglas checks in from Arlington, Virginia:

It’s a patch of blue in a region where they Rock the Red.

No, I’m not talking an electoral map. I’m talking about the Colony Grill, a Northern Virginia restaurant that’s become an outpost for New York Rangers fans in the Washington area.

About 245 miles separate Madison Square Garden from the Colony Grill, but you wouldn’t have known it Friday, when about 50 members of the D.C. Rangers fan club packed the place and chanted “Let’s go Rangers” at the top of their lungs while they watched their team defeat the Washington Capitals 3-1 in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference First Round on televisions throughout the eatery.

The New England-style pizza restaurant had a New York attitude at the watch party Friday and for Game 1 on Sunday. Club co-founder Joe Salinas brought blue noise makers, a light that flashed the Rangers logo on the ceiling and a small bullhorn.

The restaurant erupted in “Slapshot,” the Rangers’ goal song, every time the team scored, and booed heartily every time Washington forward Tom Wilson touched the puck.

“We’re in enemy territory, this is the Caps’ area,” Dani Keller, a transplant from Westchester County, New York, who is part of the club’s leadership, told me. “We have enough Rangers fans here that if we can all come together, we can turn it blue vs. red, and that’s been our goal from the very beginning.”

The club was formed in 2014 by friends who are part of the New York diaspora in the Washington-Maryland-Virginia area. It’s grown to more than 1,200 members.

There won’t be many Rangers fans at the Colony Grill when New York and Washington meet in Game 4 of the best-of-7 series Sunday. Most of them plan to be at Capital One Arena.