Cathy, Mr. Kurzweil’s wife of 34 years — guess where their first date was — tells the story about Buddy rushing to a Rangers game in Los Angeles and driving four blocks on the sidewalk to avoid a traffic jam.

“When they win, that’s when you ask to borrow money and pay off the credit cards,” she said, adding, “After a loss, he withdraws — I mean, he’s not violent, but you don’t want to be around him.”

For Rangers road games, he sits in his “Rangers room,” a man-cave filled with team memorabilia at his home in Closter, N.J. His game chair faces two 50-inch television screens. To his immediate left is the poster-size photograph of the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup in 1994, signed by the team’s leader and star, Mark Messier (“To Buddy — #1 Rangers fan”). To his right is a pair of leg pads worn by the Rangers goalie Henrik Lundquist.

He slips his Rangers Stanley Cup ring on his finger and then watches in solitude. Neither Cathy nor Jesse dares intrude. After home games, Mr. Kurzweil returns home to the room and watches replays of the game, which he always records.

“Nothing in life gives me that rush of a live Rangers game,” he said. “I’ve never had a cigarette, a beer or a drug, because the Rangers have always been my drug.”

And there was no high like that exalted evening of June 14, 1994, when the Rangers won their first Stanley Cup since 1940. Mr. Kurzweil arrived at the Garden entrance at 7 a.m.

“It was a day I lived for, and dreamt about, and waited for, my entire life,” he said. Mr. Kurzweil, who, earlier in their playoff run, so reveled in the team’s Game 6 victory over the New Jersey Devils that he went home and watched the third period, with a Messier hat trick, repeatedly until going to work the next morning.