New Jersey Devils-New York Rangers Rivalry Alive And Well
By Nick Villano
The New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers had one of the craziest games of the season on Monday night. It shows these two teams still hate each other despite their place in the standings.
Honestly, the headline to this article prior to the game between the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers was going to be something to the liking of “does the Hudson River Rivalry still matter?” Well, things changed didn’t they?
The Devils and Rangers did not hold back punches, literally and figuratively. In an especially fierce second period, there were two fights, and one instance where two players tried to drop the gloves. Both Nathan Bastian and Miles Wood lost fights with Brendan Lemieux, and Blake Coleman did his best to throw down, but just wasn’t allowed.
This is not what we expected. Both these teams are just going through the motions until the end of the season. Both teams have no chance of making the postseason. It’s actually the first time both these teams are missing the postseason ever. Wait, really? That’s right.
The Devils missed the postseasons from 1983 to 1987. The Rangers made the postseason every one of those seasons. They missed the season after in 1988, and that was the year the Devils made a run to the Conference Finals. From 1990 to 2010, the Devils missed the playoffs once. That was in 1996. The Rangers made the postseason that year. During the Devils most recent run of bad seasons, the Rangers made the postseason every year but one, last year. That same year Taylor Hall took the Devils to the postseason himself.
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So, you see why this has been such a good rivalry. Beyond geography, the Rangers and Devils have been very good franchises for the better part of four decades. They’ve met in the postseason six times, including twice with the winner going to the Stanley Cup Finals. This rivalry has a ton of history, it was just hard to see if it would last.
Both these teams are rebuilding. They both sent away veterans on the last years of their contract at the trade deadline. The names keep changing in this rivalry, and they get younger and younger. 10 players on this current Rangers team wasn’t alive during the Rangers last Stanley Cup victory, when they ran through the Devils in seven games on their way to winning. These players don’t remember those 90s slug fests.
These kids may not know about the Mark Messier guarantee, or the Martin Brodeur–Henrik Lundqvist respectful rivalry, or John MacLean breaking the arm of Niklas Sundstrom,, or Peter DeBoer and John Tortorella almost coming to blows. These kids do know one thing, once you wear red and black, you hate red, white and blue, and vice versa.
One would think that means this rivalry would go by the wayside, but you can really see that just isn’t the case. Sure, there was the added pressure that this was the final home game for the Devils, but making it a rivalry game means that much more. The Hudson River Rivalry is alive and well, and that’s good news for both these teams.