Pardon me if I’ve told this story before.

I was in a Starbucks a block from Madison Square Garden on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. A young guy came running in, swearing, acting like a maniac, hollering about a plane that had hit the World Trade Center.

Somebody in the shop said he’d heard it was a small plane, and an accident. The guy who had come in screaming said, no, they’re saying it was a terrorist.

I had taken a train into the city that day, was somewhere en route to Grand Central when the first plane struck. I left Starbucks and immediately saw the skyscraper across 34th Street from the Garden being evacuated.

Holy crap! What is going o?. Sirens were deafening. Police cars, fire trucks and amublances were speeding downtown. I went into the Garden and up to the pressroom and turned on a TV. There was the fire high on one of the towers. I didn’t know which one it was, or anything else, other than this was a nightmare.

The Rangers had always trained in Burlington, Vt., in previous years. This year, having missed the playoffs so many years in a row, they were extending an olive branch to their fans. They were going to train in the city and open their scrimmages to the public. The plan was to have some sessions at Chelsea Piers, and the plan was for the team to stay at the World Trade Center Marriott.

Those plans fell through. So the Rangers were at another hotel when the first plane hit, preparing to make the short walk to the Garden for phyiscals.

Then the second plane hit. Then the Pentagon was hit. Then the towers fell, one, then the other. I saw the second tower crumble with my own eyes, and I still have trouble breathing when I see a puff of smoke near a skyline.

Many of the Rangers lost friends and relatives in the attack, as did I, and many of you.

I will never forget the way the Rangers handled themselves, how they went downtown and helped, visited firehouses, visited Ground Zero, and unlike other sports teams in the city, they did so without reporters, without cameras, without photo ops.

I will never forget that the Rangers—one of two teams that actually play their games in Manhattan—played the first pro sports events after the disaster. The first was a preseason game in Detroit, and we were allowed to fly on the team charter for that one since there were almost no commercial flights anywhere. I remember banking out of Westchester Airport and over the city, where you could still see smoke and fires days after the attacks. I remember cursing and crying as we looked out the tiny windows of the jet, and I wasn’t the only one.

I remember the way the Detroit fans cheered the Rangers, a symbolic nod of sympathy for and togetherness with New York.

Until that day six years ago, the most unforgettable thing I’d ever seen was the ticker-tape parade in June of 1994.