“We knew [the Devils] weren’t going anywhere. You never know what’s going to happen with teams. There are very talented teams that never get back to that position in this league. But whatever it was, you knew the Devils weren’t going to be one of those teams. You knew they had the pieces in place to get back right there, and give them credit. You have to give credit to Lou [Lamoriello], and Scott [Stevens], and Scotty [Niedermayer], and Marty [Brodeur], and all those guys who kept it going. They did not sit around after that loss to us. They got right back up.”
—Brian Leetch, New York Rangers (1988–2004)
There were a couple of different directions the Devils could travel the season after The NHL’s Greatest Series Ever. Could they use the gut-wrenching loss as motivation, pick themselves up, and be on the attack from the get-go? Or would they sit around and feel sorry for themselves, knowing all along that it should have been them skating around with the Stanley Cup in New Jersey, rather than the Rangers across the river in New York?
As it turned out, at first, it was neither.
That’s because team owners around the league locked out the players on October 1, 1994, over several lingering labor issues, the biggest of which was the institution of a salary cap. The owners wanted one. The players didn’t.
Less than six months after Gary Bettman handed Mark Messier the Stanley Cup, ending one of the most dramatic NHL postseasons in history, the commissioner had strain and strife on his hands, and the thought of not being able to build off 1994’s momentum was a scary one to the league as a whole.
The Devils, though, had their own problems. Even before the lockout, Lou Lamoriello had several lingering contract issues to work out, most notably that of Scott Stevens, the captain. Stevens was coming off a terrific regular season, posting 60 assists and 78 points, which were incredible numbers when you consider Jacques Lemaire’s defensive system. He didn’t have a banner postseason, but Stevens did manage two goals and 11 points, and when you’re the unrivaled, unquestioned leader of a team that came within a goal of making the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time, you must be doing something right.
The Blues certainly watched The NHL’s Greatest Series Ever with admiration, respect, and more importantly, a pad and pen. Not only did St. Louis make a shopping list and check it twice based off that series, they actually went out and acted on that list, plucking Mike Keenan away from the Rangers. Then, they put a target squarely on Stevens’ back as Priority No. 2.
Lamoriello, though, never wavered. Although it was a tough contract to sign—the Devils were not then and certainly not now known as free spenders—New Jersey’s driven general manager matched St. Louis’ offer sheet for Stevens. The Blues, on July 4, 1994, offered the defenseman $17 million over four years. On July 9, so did Lamoriello.
To many, it was a stunning decision. The Devils, after all, had to account for every dollar coming in and going out. They were a team that didn’t have a lucrative television deal and did not sell out every game. There were always rumors of a possible move out of the Garden State—in 1995, Nashville would be the rumored, hot-topic destination—so big dollars for big players just wasn’t their style. But that goes to show how serious they were about sustaining their success. And it showed how much Stevens embodied the Devils’ Way, through thick and thin. So, at crunch time, Lamoriello got it done.
So, all was well in the Swamp, right? The captain was back, the team was still in place for the most part, and another lengthy postseason run awaited, right?
“No. Hardly the case,” said Larry Brooks, who covered the Devils through 1995 for the Post before shifting over to the Rangers. “They bickered through the whole year. It had a lot to do with money. Who was getting paid? Who wasn’t? It was a bad situation.”
From the players’ perspective, it was pretty simple. As a collective group, they orchestrated the best season in the history of the franchise. They took that horned-and-tailed NJ logo for an unforgettable ride, and though it ended just a bit short of its hopeful destination, they believed, as constituted, they could get right back there.
For the right price, of course.
“Everyone was pissed off that Stevens got so much money. It was an unhappy team, it really was,” Brooks said. “Claude [Lemieux] was unhappy, Marty [Brodeur] was unhappy. It was not shaping up to be a happy year. And then came the lockout.”
But the Devils prided themselves on breeding professionals, and the common perception was, when the time came, they’d be able to put their differences aside and just go out and play. Turns out, that happened earlier than expected…and without the league knowing.
“With Lou, where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Lemieux said with a laugh. “We knew how we all felt after Game 7. But we also knew if we kept it together, and kept our composure and just played together, whenever the season started, we’d be okay. Well, we didn’t want to wait that long. So, we were probably the only team in the league that skated through the lockout. Yes. We were probably doing it illegally, but we were doing it nonetheless. We skated through the lockout at South Mountain Arena [the Devils’ normal practice facility at the time, in Mennen, New Jersey]. Many of us stayed in New Jersey, and worked together and got ready for the season. But, yeah, looking back on it, that was probably illegal. What are you going to do?”
Wouldn’t that have been an interesting news item 16 years ago? As it was, the Devils did start that season they were looking forward to—finally—on January 11, 1995. After 468 leaguewide games were lost, as well as the NHL’s All-Star Weekend, the two sides came to an agreement and a shortened, 48-game season was created amid a modified salary cap.
Almost immediately, the Devils became favorites for the Stanley Cup. Not only was the roster virtually intact from the season before, but the season’s length, it seemed, favored the Devils, who could grind out 48 games with the trap in place a whole lot more efficiently than 84.
Bernie Nicholls, a good teammate and friend to several of the Devils, signed with the Chicago Blackhawks and figured to be tough to replace. But he was the most notable defection on a team that was still loaded.
“It was pretty clear that he was going to go,” Brooks said of Nicholls. “It was a pretty mutual decision. He had really some good games, but his time there had run its course.”
It wasn’t easy. Lamoriello watched the veteran forward and how he dealt with his family crisis, and always looked at both the player and the person that Bernie Nicholls was with admiration. But a decision was made on both sides, and it was time to move on.
Either way, Lamoriello and Lemaire felt comfortable. Lingering money issues with some of the players aside, they knew what they had and what they were up against. The Rangers were without their Stanley Cup coach. The Canucks needed a little more offense from someone not named Pavel Bure to repeat their run. The Red Wings, with super-skilled forwards Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov, appeared to have all the right pieces but couldn’t seem to get it together in the postseason. And the Flyers, another popular choice with a rising superstar in center Eric Lindros, were probably still a year away.
That left the Devils. A team with enough offense, a stifling defense, a returning Rookie of the Year goaltender, and all the motivation under the sun to get it done. It was that simple. At least, that was the idea.
“We had the desire to win,” Lemieux said. “We had the best coach, and we had the best goaltender. But for some reason, it wasn’t working. A lot of us had horrible regular seasons. I know I did.”
The Devils quickly found out it wasn’t going to be easy to sneak up on anyone anymore. They were the hunted now, and it seemed clear that opponents had read New Jersey’s clippings and headlines. On opening night, January 22, 1995, what appeared like the Devils’ most important season in their history began with a thud: a ho-hum 2–2 tie to the abundantly average Whalers in Hartford. Hard as it might be to believe, that contest, which opened a four-game road swing to begin the year, was the Devils’ best effort on the trip.
Over the next six days, questions began to surface about this team’s drive and desire. With a shortened schedule, even slight slumps could prove costly to a season overall. Teams no longer had 84 games to find themselves. And through four games, the Devils were lost. Clearly:
January 25: Sabres 2, Devils 1
January 26: Bruins 1, Devils 0
January 28: Canadiens 5, Devils 1
New Jersey limped home 0–3–1, having scored four goals total. Forget the Stanley Cup for a second. Making the playoffs, it seemed, might be a stretch for this team.
“It was not a good start,” Bruce Driver said. “I don’t know that anyone could pinpoint one specific thing. We just weren’t playing well.”
The Devils won the next two games, both at home, and began to come together just a bit. They weren’t easy, but a 2–1 win over the Sabres and a 5–4 decision over the Nordiques, if nothing else, built some confidence.
But a six-game snapshot of this brief season gave many a glimpse of what this Devils team truly was. Despite the talent, despite the motivation, despite the path being wide open for them and their shutdown system, it was clear to see that nothing was going to come easy…and that something was a bit off.
Was the money issue—who was getting it and who wasn’t—still lingering for the players? Was it the absence of Nicholls, a reliable, potent center, who could win faceoffs, score goals, and fire up a team when needed? Someone who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind, in good times and bad?
“The sad thing is, I don’t know how the negotiations went when things got serious, but the thing about Lou is this: no one was that important,” Nicholls said. “They can replace anybody in New Jersey. I wasn’t a huge priority for them, and I was offered a real good deal to go to Chicago, so I did. If I could ever go back, I would have played in New Jersey for free. Trust me. I promise you that. But one thing that always stuck out to me was this: they should have kept me, because they needed my role.”
It was hard to argue that point, and Lamoriello wasn’t blind to that. As the season wore on, as the mediocrity became pervasive, he began to plot out a way to fill that gap. He worked the phones. He listened to his scouts. He needed a center. On February 27, he got his man.
On the same day that the Devils orchestrated perhaps their best game of the season—a 6–1 win over the Canadiens in East Rutherford—Lamoriello shipped Corey Millen, a 30-year-old center who had just two goals in 17 games, to Dallas for Neal Broten, a 35-year-old center who was on the downside of his career, one that began with an Olympic gold medal while on the 1980 Miracle on Ice team.
It was a risk, without question. In many ways, they were similar players—both Americans, both former Olympians, both centers. But Lamoriello thought Broten brought a little more to the table, even though he was older and had no goals and just four assists in his 17 games that season for the Stars.
Perhaps both players just needed a change of scenery. That was Lamoriello’s specialty, after all. He could always sense when that was the case.
“At that point,” Nicholls said, “they had replaced me, and they really had all the pieces to the puzzle. You just knew that was the kind of move that was going to work for them.”
Broten had an assist in his first game as a Devil, and things took off from there.
“I trusted Neal, and I trusted [Dallas general manager and coach] Bob Gainey when I made the trade,” Lamoriello said. “I asked him, ‘What’s he got left?’ And it was a trade that was good for both teams. But Neal came in here, and you have to give him tremendous credit. He came in to be a part of a team. Not to be an individual. And that was important. And that’s why you see me bring a lot of players back at the trade deadline. You don’t have to change their culture. You have to feel it, and guys we know, and guys we have had before, know that. I felt it with Neal.”
He wasn’t alone. Millen could feel it, as well. He knew what the Devils were lacking, and he knew Broten’s skill set could fill that the void. In fact, Millen remembers the day he first showed up with his new team, the Stars, and found an interesting roommate waiting for him.
“So, I get traded, and I went and met the Stars in Winnipeg,” Millen said. “They were on a road trip, and I show up there, and my roommate was Paul Broten…Neal’s brother! The team was already there, in the hotel. I fly in, I get to the room, and Paul is one of my best friends from way back. So, we laughed about it, for sure. I walk in, he was happy to see me, but hey, his brother just got traded, so he was a bit down, as well. And the first thing I told him was, ‘Holy shit, your brother is going to go win a Stanley Cup.’ He looked at me, laughed at me, and said ‘What-ev-er.’ But I just knew it. I knew Jacques would play Neal with [John] MacLean and [Stephane] Richer, and they would have an impact. I knew Neal fit exactly with what the Devils were trying to accomplish. And he did. When you look back on it, that line was key. I just knew Neal was going to do well there.”
Millen was right. In 30 regular season games with New Jersey, Broten had eight goals and 28 points. How different were the Devils from the Stars? Well, he went from being a minus-8 player in Dallas to being a plus-9 player in New Jersey. He meshed well with MacLean and Richer, as Millen predicted, and posted three game-winning goals in his 43 shots on net.
But Broten wasn’t alone. Lamoriello also added to the back line, acquiring Shawn Chambers from Tampa Bay. A defenseman with a cannon shot who could help on the power play but needed time to adjust to the Devils’ system, Chambers made it to New Jersey in time to play 21 regular season games. He adapted well, and put up Devil-like numbers from a defenseman: two goals, seven points, 23 shots, and a plus-2 rating. He was solid. He was secure. And with Broten, he completed Lamoriello’s blueprint.
“We had the orchestra. We had the violins, we had the drummers, we had the piano players, and we had the conductor as the coach,” Lamoriello said. “What we needed, at the time, was a center-ice man and we needed a defenseman. Did I think Shawn Chambers was going to turn out the way he played? Come on. Did I hope he would? Absolutely. But did I think Jacques would pair him up with Bruce Driver and be a shut-down guy, and also score some big goals? Come on. And did I think Neal would come in, at his age, and play to that level? Again, come on.”
As humble as he may have been, and as subtle as the moves seemed at first glance, they worked. And the league took notice.
“From a GM standpoint, and I’ve looked at this for years, you can’t make trades for a lead dog at the deadline,” said Neil Smith, who a year before Lamoriello’s moves mortgaged the Rangers’ future for a Stanley Cup. “You trade for peripheral players, faceoff guys, a defenseman, but you can’t trade for, say, a No. 1 goalie, or a first-line player, and expect them to lead you to the Cup. It’s too late at that point. You cannot reinvent yourself when the playoffs start. You simply have to fortify what you’ve got, and maybe patch up a weakness or two. Lou is a master of that.”
Though the Devils were hardly the machine people thought they’d be, Lemaire was able to get enough out of them. They finished 22–18–8 with 52 points, good for second in the Atlantic. A dominant group they were not. But they made the postseason, snagging the No. 5 seed and a date with the Bruins in Round 1. And to these Devils, given everything they had endured over the past 12 months, that was all that mattered.
“I don’t know what it was. We stepped on the ice in Boston, the day before we started the playoffs, and it was a hot day there. Will never forget it,” Driver said. “Our practice was short because of that. But it was probably the most crisp practice we had all year. The shots, the passes, the flow of practice, everything was just…perfect. There were no mistakes made in practice, and from that session on, it just snowballed and snowballed and snowballed. And it’s something that I still can’t answer to this day. I just don’t know how the switch just went on. We didn’t play well down the stretch, and all of a sudden, we have one good, 45-minute practice, and just like that, we were at the top of our game? To this day, I can’t explain what, how, or why the switch went on. But it did. And then we get to the playoffs in Boston, we start clicking, and it was like, ‘Oh, my God. How did we do that?’ I don’t have an answer, other than that it just…happened.”
The Devils blasted the Bruins in the first two games, stunning the Boston Garden faithful. Combined, they outscored the Bruins 8–0 in six periods of play, as Brodeur notched two road shutouts in a two-day span.
“Once the playoffs came, everything changed,” Brooks said. “They were a juggernaut.”
They certainly looked like it early, as they dispatched a decent Bruins team in five games, scoring 14 goals along the way. On May 14, 1995, a 3–2 Devils win was the last hockey game played at the old Boston Garden, as New Jersey punched its ticket for the second round for the second time in as many years.
Incidentally, in that final spring of the Boston Garden, much was made of the Celtics’ finale, and how Orlando Magic star center Shaquille O’Neal shut the doors on the old building in Beantown. In Game 4 of a first-round series versus the Celtics, O’Neal, one of the game’s biggest names, had 25 points and 13 rebounds as the Magic won 95–92 to take the series 3–1. Ken Daneyko, though, was amused by the thought of O’Neal taking credit for the closure. In fact, after New Jersey’s Game 5 win, the veteran defenseman was short, sweet, and succinct with his take on the matter.
“Shaq didn’t close the Boston Garden,” he said. “The Devils did.”
The Penguins weren’t moving to another building, and they figured to have plenty more scoring punch than the Bruins did, but the Devils treated them just the same in Round 2. After a hiccup in Game 1—a 3–2 loss in Pittsburgh—the Devils woke up and dominated. They would not lose another game in the series, outscoring Jaromir Jagr and the high-flying Penguins 15–5 in the final four contests.
It was onward and upward for New Jersey, and it looked like the sky was the limit.
“It was lights out. Everything we did was working,” said Bill Guerin, who had three goals and 11 points in this postseason run. “You see that happen a lot in sports. Every team has to go through some sort of heartbreak and some sort of lesson to get where you want to go. For us, it was getting our hearts broken by the Rangers, and then struggling in the regular season for so long. At some point, we had just had enough. We were too good not to get over it.”
The Devils were 8–2 through two rounds and were clicking on all cylinders. And though the jury was out on whether they truly wanted a chance to exact revenge on the Rangers, in the end, it didn’t matter. Lindros and a line known as the Legion of Doom dominated the defending Stanley Cup champions in Round 2. Philadelphia swept New York, setting up a date with the Devils in the conference finals.
In a postseason run as crisp and concise as the one the Devils had scripted, it was hard to believe that any adversity would stand in their way. The Flyers, at the least, put up a fight and challenged New Jersey in a way Boston and Pittsburgh could have only dreamt about. Of course, it didn’t start out that way.
The Devils notched two road wins to open the series at the Spectrum—ho-hum, another great start. The games weren’t even close, as New Jersey posted 4–1 and 5–2 victories in a 72-hour span. Brodeur made 38 saves en route to the wins, and the Devils cruised home down the New Jersey Turnpike needing just two wins to make the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time.
Lindros and Co. found their stride somewhere along their trip up the Turnpike. And with plenty of Flyers fans in the stands—it wasn’t quite like the Rangers fans in East Rutherford, but there was a strong Philadelphia presence nonetheless—the Flyers knocked the Devils off their course. A 3–2 overtime win in Game 3 was followed by a 4–2 win in Game 4, and just like that, the series was tied.
There was worse news for the Devils. On a quick turnaround, they were to face the Flyers in the Spectrum for Game 5 on a Sunday afternoon, less than 24 hours after losing Game 4.
“But we had been through a lot already,” Lemieux said. “And when you have great character, anything is possible. We believed in that.”
Leave it to Lemieux to save the day. He was already salvaging his poor regular season with a terrific postseason, and he took it to another level in Game 5. With less than a minute remaining in a 2–2 game, Lemieux corralled a loose puck in his own zone, streaked down the far boards, and—surprised he had so much room in a tight game—let off a slap shot from the right point, just beyond the blue line, that beat Flyers goaltender Ron Hextall with 44.2 seconds remaining.
He jumped up in the air with both skates and threw his arms up to the ceiling in another famous, photogenic pose—he was good at those—as the Devils escaped with a 3–2 victory that demoralized the Flyers and their fans, perhaps for good.
“It was a perfect shot by Lemieux,” John Davidson said on the FOX telecast.
In a postseason that was looking far too easy, Lemieux stopped the bleeding and put the Devils on the brink of the Finals…again. But would the second time be a charm? A 3–2 lead at home, needing one win against a rival to secure a conference crown? Sure, it wasn’t the Rangers that would invade the Meadowlands. But it was still a rival, and one that had tested New Jersey more than anyone else this postseason.
But Lindros was not Messier. And there were no guarantees this time. For the road team, that meant there was no chance.
And so on Tuesday, June 13, 1995, in front of 19,040 fans, the Devils finished the job. A 4–2 win over the Flyers that was not as close as the score indicated erased the monkey that had lived on the Devils’ backs for a year. Indeed, through the summer of heartbreak, the fall of a lockout, and the winter of discontent, the Devils had secured their first conference title and were headed to the Stanley Cup Finals.
“[The Flyers have] got a great future ahead of them, but for us, we’re running out of time. So, it’s great for us, and we can enjoy this for a while,” Stevens told Al Morganti on ESPN after the ceremonial handshake. “It was so important for us to get to this next step here. Anything else would have been disappointing.”
If you traveled back to that first postseason practice that Driver spoke so highly about and looked at the numbers from that point, they were astonishing. The Devils went 12–4 through three rounds, none of which they had home-ice advantage for. They went a miraculous 8–1 on the road.
Only the Detroit Red Wings, with stars up and down the roster, separated New Jersey from immortality. And clearly, it seemed like the toughest of all tests. The Red Wings had 33 wins and 70 points in the regular season, and were 12–2 in the postseason. They simply owned the Western Conference.
But not even Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, and a Hall of Fame coach in Scotty Bowman could derail this Devils train. Despite having home-ice advantage, despite having more experience, and despite, perhaps, having more balance, the Red Wings never stood a chance. A 2–1 victory in Game 1 served notice to all the high flyers in the West that the Devils weren’t fazed. And in Game 2, three days later in the Motor City, New Jersey registered two of its more famous goals in franchise history en route to a 2–0 series lead.
“Here’s Niedermayer, he can fly, here comes Niedermayer, Richer the trailer, Niedermayer just missed! Niedermayer scores,” Gary Thorne exclaimed on ESPN. “Scott Niedermayer! The 21-year-old showing you why, despite the fact that he’s played mostly D for the Devils, he is an offensive threat.”
In clearly one of the best individual plays you will ever see from someone in a New Jersey uniform, Niedermayer took a loose puck to the right of Brodeur, carried it out of his own zone, created room in the neutral zone, and let off a wrist shot that sailed over the goal and Detroit netminder Mike Vernon. The puck actually caromed off the backboards right back onto Niedermayer’s stick, and he easily flicked it past a stunned, sprawled Vernon at 9:47 of the third period.
“You talk about an end-to-end beauty,” Bill Clement said.
The goal tied the score at 2–2 and set the stage for a proud kid from Brick, New Jersey, to send the Devils home to his native state with a win.
“A defenseman is down on the ice, a player is hurt,” Thorne said. “And Zelepukin’s shot…Vernon the save…Jim Dowd scores! A Detroit Red Wing was down on the ice for all of that. Paul Coffey blocked a shot, stayed down, and the Devils have a 3–2 lead!”
Indeed, with Coffey out of commission, New Jersey pounced, and Dowd, the first New Jersey native ever to play for the Devils, and the one who was right in the crease when Stephane Matteau shattered his dreams a year before, scored the biggest goal of his life.
Dowd’s second of the postseason at 18:36 was a bit controversial, but he wasn’t about to complain. It was a game-winner, after all.
“I was just happy to be on the ice,” Dowd said. “Are you kidding me? Happy to be a part of it, happy they had enough faith in me to be out there. Every night, we were adding to an era that really started it all for the Devils, and I’m so proud I was a part of it.”
The Niedermayer-Dowd parlay crushed the Red Wings. In a span of 72 hours, they had lost as many games in one series as they had in the previous three combined. As talented as they may have been, it was no surprise that they put up little fight back in East Rutherford, which was gearing for a party with each new shift. A 5–2 Devils win in Game 3 all but ended the series on June 22. With the Red Wings in an 0–3 hole, the focus turned to not if, but when, New Jersey would celebrate its first Stanley Cup.
Turns out, the wait was only two days.
On Saturday, June 24, 1995, in an arena built on a swampland in Bergen County, New Jersey, Lamoriello’s plan, Lemaire’s strategy, and Dr. John McMullen’s dream finally came to fruition. A 5–2 victory that never seemed in question capped a quest for respect, revenge, and recognition in the Garden State. Just more than a year after the Rangers won it six miles away, the dominant Devils had won the Stanley Cup with ease.
“Cleared by Richer, 13 seconds to go. Bouncing puck at the Detroit line. Ramsey will circle in his own end. Seven seconds to go. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. And one! And the oldest trophy competed for in North America, Lord Stanley’s Cup, has made its way through the Lincoln Tunnel! To the Meadowlands! To the Garden State! The New Jersey Devils are the 1995 Stanley Cup champions!”
Those were the powerful, precise, passionate words of Mike Miller, who was in just his second season as an NHL play-by-play man. After calling Matteau’s goal—in a slightly less enthusiastic tone than Howie Rose did, of course—he was able to have his moment a year later.
“Anything that was done, was done to be the best. There was nothing ever personal with the Devils. We were, and are still to this day in my opinion, in the frame of mind that we compete against ourselves, more than anything else. We don’t compete against anyone else,” Lamoriello said. “At the end of the game, every day, every minute, you compete against yourself to be the best.”
In 1995, they were the best.
“I remember after we lost the first game Scotty Bowman saying if you’re trapped by the trap, you’re trapped. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, but then again, it does make a lot of sense. I think they could get into your head with the way they were playing,” said Bob Errey, a forward for Detroit in 1995, and now a television analyst for Pittsburgh. “And we just wanted to play our game, and they didn’t let us. We had a high, up-tempo game, a skilled game, a passing game, and really a game that people enjoy watching, and we just didn’t want to play the Devils’ way at that point. We weren’t going to change our game at that point. But that’s the way it was. And they were able to get some bounces and steals, and they stole a couple of early games and really were able to capitalize on that momentum once they returned home.”
They did it in front of a crowd that was often maligned and often the scourge of the league. But for one night, and for one season, they ruled hockey.
“The fans are something I will always remember about that night,” Niedermayer said. “And really, for all games, for that matter. However many there were from night to night, they were as passionate as they could be. I know that. They knew the game, and they knew how they wanted us to play. I’ll always remember that.”
As will Bettman, who made his second Stanley Cup delivery in the metropolitan area in just more than 12 months. In this trophy presentation, he was received a little more harshly than he had been a year earlier—the lockout was still fresh in the fans’ minds, and there were still those Devils-to-Nashville rumors lingering—but it was memorable nonetheless. The crowd, not unlike the Garden fans a year ago, erupted when the Cup was introduced. And then Bettman took over.
“The Devils’ amazing playoff run has taken the word teamwork to a new level,” the commissioner said, as boos reigned down. “Congratulations to the Devils. Scott Stevens…this is for you.”
Stevens didn’t skate over alone. He brought his alternate captains—Driver and MacLean—and together they raised the chalice high above their heads and into the Devils’ history books.
“The system was awesome and it worked, and we all just believe in it always,” Stevens said. “Jacques was such a big part of that. He instilled that belief into us, and once we got going, we were tough to beat.”
Though the 31-year-old Stevens liked to talk about his age and the fact that the Devils weren’t getting any younger, the fact remained that the system worked with many different parts, and coaches, for that matter.
In fact, New Jersey would go on to win the Stanley Cup in 2000 and 2003 with different leaders behind the bench. Larry Robinson, Lemaire’s understudy, won the franchise’s second title, over Dallas in six games, and the late Pat Burns won the third, over Anaheim in seven.
But it goes beyond Cups for the Devils. It’s a culture of winning, a way of life, and though that didn’t always result in championships, it did result in consistency. Headed into the 2012–13 season, New Jersey was the proud owner of five conference championships and nine division titles. All of them came under Lamoriello’s watch.
“Once you start to get results, and it starts to sink in, it really starts to feel good,” Stevens said. “At many points during that run, we almost felt unbeatable.”
Along the way, they became the standard for successful hockey in the post-lockout era. In a period that began in 1995 and ended in 2008, the Devils and Red Wings combined for seven Stanley Cup titles.
“They truly kept it going, and [the Rangers] didn’t,” Brian Leetch admitted. “You have to give them credit. They kept it together, and we couldn’t. That’s certainly something that is disappointing on my end, no question.”
As satisfying and joyous as 1994 was, one wonders if Rangers fans, looking back on it now, would trade the Devils’ three titles for the Rangers’ one.
“From a scout’s perspective, that was the right way to do it, and I always say that Lou is the best GM of our generation,” Neil Smith said. “I wish I could have been given the time to build the Rangers the way Lou was able to build the Devils. But I had to sell my soul to win the Cup. You just knew the Devils were going to be good for a long time, and we weren’t. And I think if you ask most Rangers fans if they’d take the long-term plan to win three Cups over all those years, and endure, or just win one Cup, they’d probably say, ‘Who gives a shit? Just win one.’”
But that “one” clearly triggered New Jersey. You can make a case that if Matteau’s goal didn’t go in, and the Devils somehow pulled out a Game 7 win in 1994 and went on to win the Stanley Cup over Vancouver, they may never have gotten back there again. To beat their biggest rival in The NHL’s Greatest Series Ever, and to win a Cup two weeks later? Perhaps their course would have followed New York’s. As it was, after losing that series to the Rangers, they were hungry. They were determined. And they were driven.
Before long, a dynasty was born.
“You build history. And I was fortunate, growing up, to be able to watch the Montreal Canadiens and see them grow. They had a history to uphold, and that’s a great thing for the fans and for the organization,” Brodeur said. “It’s a source of pride, and when you want to grow as an organization, recognizing the history of it, is something that you have to do. We do that here.”
Along the way, though, no one forgot The NHL’s Greatest Series Ever.
“To think that we didn’t learn from that series is crazy,” Randy McKay said. “To think that it might not have been good for us in the long run…it definitely motivated us. It might have been the best thing to happen to us.”
One thing is for sure: it carried them forward for the better part of two decades.
“No question about it. There are many times where you have to lose before you can win,” Miller said. “When they beat Detroit, it catapulted the Red Wings into what they became. Somehow, it just works that way. Doesn’t feel good at the time, of course, but when you lose like that, many times you eventually win.”
Ken Daneyko sure looks at it that way. Clearly, it was awful losing to Messier, his great friend, and the Rangers, his greatest rival. And to say that pain didn’t linger through the summer and the lockout and even the regular season would be foolish. But in the end, it was necessary fuel.
“When you look back on it, and you look at other sports, you have to go through that kind of adversity. You have to take responsibility for the tough times, learn from it, and know what you need to do the next time out. You have to go through that, and we did, and we learned from it,” Daneyko said. “And that’s a tough thing to do when you’re in it, and you’re going through it. When you retire, and you’re older, you can look back on it. But when you’re in the moment, it’s tough to see the big picture, it’s tough to believe that the tough times will eventually lead to the good times. When you look back at the series, you have to take a look at the bigger picture. I look at two things as positives, and they helped, certainly, with the rest of my career. Number one, I was part of the greatest series in the history of hockey. And number two, that was part of the process, part of the transformation into being a champion. I took those lessons with me every game I played from there on. They carried over. And I’ll never get away from that series. Never. Not a week goes by before we don’t talk about it, or it comes up in passing. It was the greatest series ever.”
Lamoriello can’t help but laugh when that title comes up every now and again. He admits it was a tough loss—“All of them are,” he said—but he’s also learned to stomach it.
“As tough as it was, and it was tough, you have to move on,” he said with a reflective smile. “Do you realize what it was like to live here then? Every restaurant that you go into, all you heard when you walked in was people saying, ‘Matteau! Matteau! Matteau!’ But it was okay. There was nothing wrong with that. When you think about that, it was great that people were thinking hockey. People were recognizing it. And people were apologizing to us. People would come up to me and say, ‘You had a great year, but I’m a Rangers fan.’ And my response to that would always be, ‘More importantly, you’re a hockey fan.’ And that was the atmosphere. It was great to be around.”
As Lamoriello savored the memory of those two weeks in May 1994, he was reminded that Daneyko, who won all three Cups with the Devils and played his whole career in New Jersey, admitted—even in defeat—that it was The NHL’s Greatest Series Ever.
“Oh, yeah,” Lamoriello said with a laugh. “Okay. Well, it was great. No question, it was great. But you can tell Kenny this: do me a favor and you tell him that it wasn’t the greatest series ever.
“Only because we didn’t win.”