“With Jacques Lemaire and Larry Robinson on the bench, with their background in Montreal, they just knew we were going to win. There was never a question about it. With that team, to me, we had the greatest goalie ever, and the defense was unbelievable. We knew, as a team, we were going to win every night. Of course, we didn’t every night. But that was the feeling we had.”
—Bernie Nicholls, New Jersey Devils (1993–94)
Lou Lamoriello is a man of phrases, sayings, quotes, and comparisons. He has a few printed and hanging in his office. He uses some when speaking to the media. He has still more for simple, everyday life. When it comes to his hockey team, his most important analogy is one of elegance, rhythm, harmony, and collaboration. And his Devils, more times than not, usually played along.
“I had a philosophy in college, that the definition of a team for me is an orchestra. Getting the most talented people to understand their role to make the music sound good,” he said. “If someone doesn’t do their job, they’re going to bring down the team. I’ve always compared a team to the most sophisticated and the most talented people in the world: the musicians in the orchestra. They practice harder than any player can practice. And if they can do it, so can you.”
Well, in 1993–94, the Devils played sweet music.
They were dedicated, driven, and dominant. And, sartorially, the league was still getting used to their new look, too. One season earlier, Lamoriello scrapped the team’s original colors and uniforms. Out went the old Christmas-tree look, the famous—or infamous, your call—red-and-green jerseys, socks, pants, and helmets that often drew laughs in league circles.
The original logo—an NJ with horns and a tail surrounded by a circle—stayed, of course. The red stayed, as well. But in 1992–93, the green was replaced with a more serious, more suitable, more marketable black, a uniform that has persevered to this day, while other teams switch every few years.
“My earliest memory is going to see them play the [Minnesota] North Stars one year, and they had those green breezers on,” Zach Parise, a first-round draft pick of the Devils in 2003 who eventually became the franchise’s captain on October 5, 2011, said of New Jersey’s pants at the time. “I remember I liked those uniforms. Those green breezers. Say what you will about them, they were unique. But I’m sure Lou just wanted a change.”
If the team’s uniforms changed in 1992, its direction did likewise in 1993.
At the helm of this new-look orchestra was a set of conductors, shipped in from Montreal on a whim from Lamoriello, that would change this morose, mediocre franchise forever, and install a culture, a way of life, that was second to none in the National Hockey League.
Jacques Lemaire and Larry Robinson, with an air about them and more Stanley Cup championships on their résumé than one cared to count, made the Devils players at the high-stakes table. And they did so almost instantaneously.
“We felt we had the talent, and what happened in the playoff series of the previous seasons was we got close but we didn’t get it done,” Lamoriello said. “What was lacking, I felt, was belief. Not belief in each other, but belief that we could win. The mind is a very powerful tool, and I can remember when I sat down with Jacques Lemaire for the first time and we talked about him coming to coach here. I knew what kind of competitor he was, and I knew of his abilities to coach. After that conversation—and I still remember it to this day—I knew he was the man to do it.”
Lemaire, a Hall of Fame forward for the Canadiens who was a part of eight Stanley Cup titles in Montreal as a player and two more as an assistant general manager, was hired as coach in 1993 after the Devils bowed out—again—in the first round of the playoffs.
With Herb Brooks—the American icon who led Team USA to the “Miracle on Ice” gold medal in the 1980 Olympics—unable to extract the absolute most out of this New Jersey group, Lamoriello felt the change was needed, though it was a difficult one. Brooks, after all, was a legend. His career was based on turning an overwhelming underdog into an unforgettable champion, leading a scrappy set of American college players in an upset of the USSR en route to the gold in Lake Placid.
But in 1993, after Brooks’ Devils lasted just five games against Pittsburgh in the first round of the playoffs, something had to be done. The Penguins were a quality team, of course. There was no great shame in losing to Pittsburgh, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champions at the time. But in that season, after captain Mario Lemieux had battled back from Hodgkin’s lymphoma, they were beatable. A round later that proved true, as the New York Islanders orchestrated a seven-game upset and ensured there would be no three-peat in Pittsburgh.
It could have easily been the Devils moving on, though. There was talent up front, with a quality mix of veteran goal scorers and up-and-coming standouts, as well as depth on defense. Remember, those 1992–93 Devils managed 40 wins and 87 points. The pieces were in place. Lamoriello just needed the right person to put together the puzzle.
Lemaire seemed to have the answers. He promised strong, defensive-minded hockey, in which he would maximize the talent of each and every player on the roster. Joining him in the cause was Robinson, a Hall of Fame defenseman who helped the Canadiens to six Cup championships. Robinson came on board as an assistant coach in charge of the back line. His mission was to get a talented, balanced set of defensemen to take another step forward in the Lamoriello process.
“Without a doubt, they came right in and something changed overnight,” said Bill Guerin, one of those bright young forwards who had been hand-picked by Lamoriello. A smooth skater with a quality shot and a mean streak to complete the arsenal, Guerin was the fifth overall pick in 1989, and was one of many American sharpshooters who Lamoriello felt could change the culture in New Jersey.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt. Lou knew American hockey, and it was a thing, at the time, that a lot of other people running teams in the NHL didn’t know too much about,” former Devils forward Corey Millen, another American, said. “Lou’s an American, he had been around USA Hockey, had been around college hockey, and that helped tremendously. We used that to our advantage. It was a Canadian game back then, and a lot of people who were running the league were Canadians. Lou took pride—and still does to this day—in knowing a lot of the American players, about where they grew up, and what kind of skills they had. And we took pride in that. We belonged with the Devils.”
Guerin concurred.
“With Jacques and Larry, everyone knew where they fit in,” he said. “We were ready for them, right off the bat. We listened, and let’s face it, we all wanted the same thing. To win.”
The Lemaire era officially began on October 6, 1993, with a textbook, standard-fare 2–1 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Meadowlands that would ultimately be a microcosm of Devils Hockey:
• A stifling defensive effort that swallowed the Lightning whole, and allowed just 18 shots total
• Constant cycling of the puck that maximized attack time in the Tampa Bay zone, which eventually resulted in 43 shots on net
• A set of two timely goals, one from a forward, Valeri Zelepukin, the other from a defenseman, Ken Daneyko
• Trusted, reliable goaltending in the form of veteran Chris Terreri, who made 17 saves
All in a day’s work.
“We knew of [Lemaire’s and Robinson’s] track records, certainly, and it didn’t take long for us to buy in. We started playing their type of hockey right away,” said former Devils forward Tom Chorske, another highly skilled American, who, like Lemaire and Robinson, had spent time with the Montreal Canadiens. “We knew immediately that we were in the presence of great hockey minds.”
From the outset, it seemed that knowledge was rubbing off. The Devils opened the season with seven consecutive wins, many of which showed the team was more explosive than anyone would have thought. In four of those wins, New Jersey scored six or more goals, and on October 12, they whacked the Winnipeg Jets 7–4.
“It was working so well. We had it going,” Guerin said. “And I remember with that start, being at [defenseman and captain] Scott Stevens’ house one night. Scott turned to me, and he said, ‘It feels like we’re never going to lose, doesn’t it?’ And it truly did. The confidence just kept growing.”
The league began to take notice, especially on the defensive end. It did not take long for people to realize the kind of hockey the Devils were playing. In those seven games, the opposition topped 30 shots just twice. In two of the wins, they didn’t even get to 20.
What were the Devils doing so differently? How did this change happen so quickly, so efficiently?
“It was a team that played responsibly, is the best way I can put it,” said Mike Miller, the Devils’ radio play-by-play man at the time. “But, yes, Jacques was always asked about the way they played, and really, it was smart, defensive hockey. I’ve never been associated with a team that when they had a one-goal lead, it looked like a three-goal lead.”
But how? Well, it wasn’t long before critics had labeled Lemaire’s style the “neutral-zone trap.” In this system—one that was not new, just seldom used—four skaters take up residence in the neutral zone, while one drifts into the offensive zone. The object is to clog up the neutral zone, filling lanes so that the opposition either turns the puck over or simply dumps the puck into New Jersey’s zone and proceeds to chase it. A turnover in the neutral zone often creates an offensive opportunity for the neutral-zone-trapping team, as that unit already has numbers moving toward the blue line and only has the half the ice, or less, to travel.
Others simply saw it as a 1-2-2 forechecking system, the one Montreal used ages ago with similarly successful results.
Either way, it was viewed as a way a team with less offensive talent could handle opponents with highly skilled forwards. For many of those teams with pure goal scorers, it was a frustrating experience.
“It was terrible hockey,” said Howie Rose, the radio voice of the Rangers at the time. “Horrible.”
But the Devils didn’t care. They were winning. They were scoring goals. And they were getting used to it.
“To me, I take offense to the term trap. Larry taught us all how to be better defensemen, and Jacques taught the forwards how to be more sound defensively, to be more responsible, and the chances will come off that,” Daneyko said. “The trap was something, to me, created by the media. People wanted to stereotype us. We were winning, and they didn’t like it. But when you broke it down, it was consistent defense, scorers who made the most of their opportunities, and great goaltending. It was as simple as that.”
Ah, the goaltending. A staple of any championship-contending team at any level. You need depth there. You need skill. And you need consistency.
These Devils had all of that and more.
Terreri was the veteran, a pint-sized, scrappy American who had been through those good-but-not-great years under McVie and Brooks. After a standout career at Providence College, a program that Lamoriello once orchestrated, Terreri found a home in New Jersey and carved out a half-decent career in the NHL. What he lacked in his 5’9” frame, he made up for in athletic skill, skating ability, and an unbelievable degree of flexibility within the crease.
Terreri was a fifth-round pick of New Jersey back in 1983, and he would go on to win 151 games in a career that ended in 2000–01. His best season was in 1990–91, when he went 24–21–7, with an .893 save percentage and a 2.91 goals-against average for the Devils.
But in 1993–94, as the new culture began to take over the organization, Terreri was merely keeping the net warm for a first-round pick out of Montreal who would eventually change the face of goaltending forever. He was a lengthy, rangy, butterfly netminder who slipped through the cracks and past enough NHL general managers that Lamoriello was able to deal down a few spots and select him with the No. 20 choice in 1990.
“In my eyes, Martin Brodeur is the best goaltender to ever play this game,” Lamoriello said with ferocity. “And how smart are we? We traded down to get him.”
Born and bred to be a goaltender, Brodeur was 6’2”, 215 pounds, and grew up in and around the—you guessed it—Montreal Canadiens organization, like so many in Lamoriello’s empire had done. Brodeur’s father, Denis, was a team photographer for the Canadiens, and so Martin had access to one of the game’s most prestigious franchises.
But his talents overrode any special treatment he may have received as a child. After moving around Canada’s private schools to get himself into the best possible hockey situation, Brodeur was clearly among the best prospects in the world by the time he became property of the Devils, and a player who represented the new age of his craft.
“I think Marty was already one heck of a goaltender by the time he made it to the league,” said former Rangers goaltender Mike Richter, who battled Brodeur countless times in the NHL as well as in international play, including the gold medal game at the 2002 Olympics. “He was young in 1994, but he was so composed. And to play at that level in that organization? What a combination. I have loved watching his career, have always loved his ability, and loved playing against him.”
In the 1980s, some NHL goaltenders, though not all, began to experiment with stickhandling a little more. Gone were the days, scouts and coaches thought, of using the stick just to make saves and to leave the puck for on-rushing defensemen. As the league became more offensive-minded, goaltenders were required to be a little more adept at handling the stick. Ron Hextall, who cut his teeth in the NHL with the Flyers, was best known for this, and he became something of an industry standard. But Brodeur would eventually take it to a new level.
In many ways, Brodeur was looked upon by many opponents as a third defenseman on the ice. In 1993–94, after riding the shuttle between New Jersey and its minor league affiliates, he was finally in the Swamp to stay.
On October 8, 1993, in New Jersey’s second game of the season, Brodeur stopped 23 of 26 shots as the Devils outlasted the Capitals in Washington 6–3. His season debut wasn’t a beauty, but it was a win, and that’s all that mattered.
The statistics were insignificant, though. In Lemaire’s “everyone matters” system, where all players and coaches were going to be held accountable for the team’s fortunes, it spoke volumes that he threw this 21-year-old onto the ice in the season’s second game. Brodeur delivered right off the bat.
“We didn’t know exactly how much of a role he was going to have. We knew his ability, and we knew where we wanted to go,” Lamoriello said. “But it’s the old expression, ‘the players determine how much they play, and when they play, by what they do.’ You can feel that they can do it, but you don’t know. You don’t know how they’ll handle the pressures that go with the roles they’ve been given.”
Brodeur made the most of his opportunity. In fact, when the regular season was said and done, he had the upper hand in the veteran-rookie platoon. He played in 47 games, going 27–11–8 with a .915 save percentage and a 2.40 goals-against average. Was he the clear-cut starter? No, and the early stages of the playoffs would prove that.
But he did enough, easily, to have a say in the postseason. And not long after the playoffs ended, he won the Calder Trophy as the league’s Rookie of the Year.
“He was just starting out, but to be able to have those numbers on a team like that as a rookie just shows you where he was headed,” said Neil Smith, who had a firm sense of the netminders around the league at the time, having just shopped—and eventually dealt—Vanbiesbrouck. “He had this ability, even then, at going on these spurts, where you just weren’t going to get anything by him.”
His teammates noticed.
“The amazing thing to me was that nothing fazed him…ever,” said former Devils forward Bernie Nicholls, who had 19 goals and 46 points on the 1993–94 team. “Here he was, what, 21 years old? And he’d go out there when called upon, make saves, set us up with breakout passes, and stare down some of the toughest forwards in the game with a smile on his face. Always so relaxed. And he never took anything home with him. To me, he is the greatest goaltender ever.”
With that type of tandem in net, the Devils took off like they never had before. A 5–2 win over Ottawa on November 18, 1993, in which Brodeur made 23 saves, gave the Devils a 14–4 record. They never looked back:
• They closed the calendar year and entered the next with four straight victories, part of a 7–2 run
• They had a nine-game unbeaten streak between February and March
• They won 12 games in March, just as the playoff races began to tighten
“Really, a lot of people tried to break down what we were doing, and it was not that hard to figure out,” said former Devils center Jim Dowd. Dowd, another American farmhand who was born and raised in New Jersey, became a playoff staple for the Devils in 1993–94 after playing in only 15 regular season games. “The transitioning was simple. Just go play your position. Get the puck and go score. Fundamental hockey that so many other teams weren’t doing. Call it the trap, call it what you want. We had the puck all the time. We had talent, and I should know, because I couldn’t get in the lineup most nights. But that was never a problem. We were all happy to be there. And when we had a lead on you in the third period, forget it. The game was over.”
How good were they? Lamoriello, ever the perfectionist, was so uncharacteristically content with this club that he didn’t make any more moves at the trading deadline. And if it hadn’t been for the season sweep at the hands of the Rangers, the Devils would have won the Presidents’ Trophy and snared the league’s No. 1 overall seed.
“It was frustrating that people discounted the Devils as something of a gimmick because they played the trap, when Montreal won Cups playing it,” said Don LaGreca, a journalist who is now torn between the rivalry. He is a Devils fan through and through, but he’s also Kenny Albert’s backup as the radio voice of the Rangers. “I just think it was misunderstood, because people labeled the trap as something that was boring. I never found the Devils boring. They just played it well. Maybe that’s just the fan in me. But I think they got a bad rap. I still have people come to me and say, ‘I don’t follow hockey anymore, because the Devils ruined it for me, because they’re boring.’ And it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. They got pigeonholed into this stereotype as this bore. People looked at them as if everything that was wrong with the game was their fault.”
Parise, a young pup with his eyes on the NHL at the time, concurred.
“They definitely did not have a great reputation throughout the hockey world, just because of how defensive-oriented they were,” he said. “And I think once you get here, and you understand the reasons behind everything, you realize that it’s just smart hockey, and eventually everyone played that way. No matter what people think, trust me, there isn’t one team in the league that doesn’t use some form of the trap in the neutral zone. Everyone does it. It just was a case that we got the reputation for it.”
Reputations didn’t matter to the 1993–94 Devils. Wins were wins, and New Jersey finished with 106 points—six fewer than the Rangers—and took the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference with a record of 47–25–12. (Pittsburgh claimed the No. 2 seed as winner of its division.)
“But we were well aware of them, and while we had things to worry about on our own end,” former Rangers defenseman Brian Leetch said, “we knew they weren’t going to go away. That 1-2-2 they were using was tough. Real tough.”
Still, the Devils didn’t exactly march into the postseason. The regular season was easily the best in the franchise’s history. The finish, though, was just so-so—New Jersey went 2–4–1 down the stretch, including an uncharacteristic three-game losing streak.
The finale on April 14, 1994, however, was a back-to-business, everything-is-okay 4–1 victory over the Senators in which Chorske had two goals and Brodeur made 18 saves. It appeared like onward and upward into new territory for this burgeoning bunch.
“When you reflect on it, that team was something else,” said Millen, an often forgotten cog to the 1993–94 Devils, who had 20 goals and 50 points in 78 regular season games before sitting most of the postseason. “It was one of the best defensive corps in the league. And then you had Brodeur and Terreri, which was such a solid tandem in net, and a pretty good group of forwards. Clearly, there was an unspoken confidence about this team. We weren’t the kind of guys to go out and show off and strut our stuff. But there was that silent confidence, where everyone knew—if you played your role that night—you were going to win more than you lose.”
That carried over to the early rounds of the playoffs. But it was hardly easy.
“When you’re talking playoffs, things certainly have to fall into place and every player has to have a pretty good year,” said former Devils defenseman Bruce Driver, a veteran mainstay who had 32 points in 66 games in 1993–94. “If one player doesn’t have a very good year, it usually doesn’t end up working out for that team in the end. For us, to an extent, it went well.”
And differently, for sure.
After years of packing up, kissing their wives and children good-bye, and heading out to start the playoffs on the road, the Devils finally had home-ice advantage, at least for one round. Unfortunately for them, with Pittsburgh snagging the second seed, the Devils could conceivably open up Round 2 away from home.
But that was miles away for a franchise that had only made the second round once before in its history. For the time being, all that mattered was that a tough-minded Buffalo Sabres team—one that could play a little defense, too—was on its way to East Rutherford as the Devils prepared to host just their second Game 1 in franchise history on April 17, 1994.
“The thing about this team is that when something went wrong, we learned from it,” Nicholls said. “We learned how to take what we needed out of bad beats.”
That was a good thing. Because three hours after all the pomp and circumstance that went with a playoff opener, the Devils were in a hole.
Final score: Sabres 2, Devils 0.
Home-ice advantage? Gone. Momentum? Gone. The bustling buzz at the Byrne Arena? Gone.
While the Rangers were busy punishing the Islanders and announcing to the rest of the league that they had arrived once and for all, across the river, the Devils looked as if they were ready to check out.
“Well, if you’re going to go anywhere in sports, you’re going to have to face adversity,” Guerin said. “For us, that started right off the bat.”
Take a closer look at the box score, though, and there were signs that New Jersey could bounce back. Certainly, it wouldn’t be easy against the Sabres’ superb, unorthodox goaltender, Dominik Hasek. But the Devils did, after all, fire 30 shots on net.
“Everyone needs to experience losing first, before winning,” Nicholls said. “And we used that as a lesson.”
It showed. The Devils regrouped and responded with two New Jersey-esque performances, taking a 2–1 series lead into Game 4 on April 23. Forward Stephane Richer had two goals and Nicholls had two assists as the Devils won Games 2 and 3 by identical 2–1 scores. Brodeur notched both victories.
For a series that featured a No. 6 seed and a No. 3—and the former was clearly better than the seeding indicated—this suddenly was a series that was probably closer than the Devils had hoped. Keep in mind, the combined score through nine periods was just 4–4. Sure, Buffalo had a great goaltender. But through three games, the Sabres had only scored three goals that mattered—the fourth was an empty-netter—and their offensive liabilities were showing.
Perhaps, the whispers said, the pressure was getting to the Devils.
“Nobody cared about what the press said. Nobody cared about what people believed,” Lamoriello said. “All we cared about was what we had to do. Eventually, everyone would get into it.”
But not before Buffalo tied the series at 2–2 with a thorough 5–3 win at the Memorial Auditorium that saw Brodeur make just 25 saves on 30 attempts.
What transpired over the next six days was something to savor, a time that fans could look back on, no matter where this club eventually landed, and say a corner had been turned.
Forward Claude Lemieux scored twice in Game 5 and Stevens had three assists as the Devils repaid Buffalo with a 5–3 victory of their own. It was, again, a response on home ice befit of a team with championship aspirations.
And even though the Devils failed to close Buffalo out in Game 6—losing 1–0 in a marathon overtime game that pushed the favorites to the brink of elimination and spanned seven periods and 125:43 of game time—New Jersey fired 70 shots on net and controlled long pockets of play during the six-hour classic.
“We learned from it, no question,” Daneyko said. “Hasek was playing well, and for a lot of us, this was our first real taste of adversity and negativity. But we knew we played hard, and we knew, going back home, a similar effort would probably get us a win.”
Daneyko’s assessment was on the money.
In a microcosm of a series the Devils dictated in every aspect but the scoreboard, New Jersey indeed made the most of home ice in Game 7, outshot Buffalo 46–18, and shook off the heartbreaker from 48 hours previous. In the end, a 2–1 victory that was not as close as the score indicated sealed the Sabres’ fate and secured a spot in the round of eight for the Devils, a position they had not held since 1988, after they outlasted the Islanders in six games.
Easy? Absolutely not. But satisfying?
“Yes,” Daneyko said. “Buffalo provided test after test, and we moved on. Who knew how much that experience would pay off in the long run? But to go through all of that, the overtime loss, falling behind in Game 1, those were all things we could bottle up and use later.”
But it didn’t take long after reaching Round 2 to realize that nothing was going to come easy for this team. Home ice notwithstanding, these Devils seemed content to make things difficult for themselves and their fans.
Wasn’t that supposed to be the Rangers’ way of doing things?
Thanks to Washington’s upset of Pittsburgh, the Devils became the highest seed remaining behind the Rangers, and so New Jersey would host the second round against the Boston Bruins. With 42 wins and 97 points, the Bruins stood to be a stiffer test than Buffalo, but not a team that should have its way with the Devils.
So much for that.
In the blink of an eye, Boston took the upper hand, winning two games at the Meadowlands in a span of three days, 2–1 and 6–5, respectively. Brodeur took both losses and caused many to wonder if he had finally hit the rookie wall.
Suddenly, the Devils and their breakout season of power, promise, and potential, were on life support. Again.
Sensing a change was needed, Lemaire elected to tap the shoulder of Terreri for Game 3, and possibly beyond, at Boston Garden. Maybe it was a stop-the-bleeding move, or maybe it was permanent. Either way, something needed to be done.
“The playoffs can be a long road and a lot of things happen,” Driver said. “But then, something just clicked.”
Terreri took the net in Boston, the skaters in front of him responded, and despite being on the road in a hockey-mad town, the Devils woke up and began to play like, well, the Devils.
“In many ways, we always considered ourselves a road team,” Driver said. “We liked getting away, bonding together, and silencing crowds a little bit.”
Mission accomplished.
Across a run of seven days that will live in Devils history, New Jersey responded with 16 goals in a four-game span, all victories, as this inconsistent, hard-to-figure collection secured a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals for just the second time in franchise history. Three of the series wins were on the road. Three of them were notched by Terreri. One of them came in overtime.
“You know what, I was just happy when they told me to go out and play,” Brodeur said. “I knew I’d be ready, but they took me out against Boston, and with good reason. I lost the first two games, and then Chris came in, won us two games, and really turned us around. He was on, I was off, it was a day-by-day operation. And it was fine.”
In New Jersey, fans always had the sense that the players meant what they said. The only thing that the Devils cared about was moving on to the next round, no matter who was in net.
Believe it or not.
“What does it take to win? Well, it takes a team full of people that do not want to let anyone down. It takes a team that is not based on individual things,” Lamoriello said. “This was a team. It was not about the name on the back, it was about the logo.”
And that logo was headed to the third round, one way or the other, where the rolling Rangers were eagerly waiting. While the Devils played the first two series like they were stuck in metropolitan-area gridlock—stop and start, bump and grind, hurry up and wait—the Rangers flew through the first two rounds via the express lane.
New York played nine games. New Jersey played 13.
“I don’t think either team really worried about how much hockey they had played, but I suppose it could have been a factor,” Richter said. “Different things happen in different series, we all know that. The important thing for both franchises is that they had moved on.”
The Devils certainly concurred.
“Absolutely. We went into the playoffs knowing full well that we had two known commodities in net,” Guerin said. “And we felt pretty good about either one of them taking the ice in a big game. They both played well, and they both won games for us. We were unfazed through most of it, and not much bothered us.”
Would that ring true as a battle of wills, separated by six miles of terrain and the Hudson River, gained in strength? Would that hold water as the pressure of playing the mighty Rangers in what might seem like as many as seven road games mounted?
Only time would tell. For the time being, at least the Devils had given themselves a chance.
“And it was a good one, sure,” said Barry Melrose, a former NHL coach with Los Angeles and Tampa Bay, and now an analyst for ESPN. “How could you not have a chance with Marty Brodeur in net, Scotty Stevens and Scotty Niedermayer on defense, Jacques Lemaire on the bench, and that system in place? Sure, they were going up against a lot in the Rangers that year, and the Rangers had a lot going for them. But one thing you always knew about those Devils was, don’t ever think they weren’t capable of something just because they weren’t always pretty.”
So, Lamoriello and Lemaire made reservations for the short trip to Manhattan. Less than a year after the two first got together and began to talk about the long-term vision for the franchise, they found themselves in the Eastern Conference Finals against their biggest rival.
“The change of culture was definitive and quick. Was it always a walk in the park? No,” Miller said. “But Lou was happy with the group, and Jacques was, too. And before you know it, they were four wins away from the Stanley Cup Finals.”
And for the New Jersey Devils, that was rarified ice.