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New Jersey Devils: My Journey Getting Blocked By New York Rangers’ Twitter

By Brandon Scalea

NEW YORK - MARCH 30: Sean Avery #16 of the New York Rangers positions himself against goaltender Martin Brodeur #30 of the New Jersey Devils on March 30, 2009 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. (Photo by Scott Levy/NHLI via Getty Images)
NEW YORK - MARCH 30: Sean Avery #16 of the New York Rangers positions himself against goaltender Martin Brodeur #30 of the New Jersey Devils on March 30, 2009 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. (Photo by Scott Levy/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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Like all passionate New Jersey Devils fans, I have an extreme dislike for the New York Rangers.

We love the Devils, but we all know where we stand on the food chain in the grand scheme of things. No matter what the Devils are doing, the Rangers will always be talked about more. The Rangers will always make more headlines. The Rangers will always have more fans.

For an organization like the Devils, a mid-market team that plays second fiddle in its own region, marketing is a big thing. The Devils’ social media and marketing team, if you haven’t noticed, is second to none. In the midst of a very exciting summer that would have drawn eyeballs to New Jersey anyway, the Devils’ social media game took it one step further.

I won’t bore you with the specific tactics they use and the fun content they have posted because I’m sure you all follow the Devils’ handles. Instead, let’s talk about the Rangers’ social media game, which until recently, looked like something out of 1926.

The Rangers don’t need any marketing geniuses to put the team out there. It’s New York City. It’s Madison Square Garden (just ask Artemi Panarin). However, the team has certainly been taking a page out of the Devils’ book and taken on some eerily similar social media tactics. Again, I won’t get into specifics—I’ll let you guys see for yourselves.

So, to stir the pot like any Devils fan wants to do every now and then, I called the Rangers out on this.

And they blocked me.

I, a 23-year-old fan whose biggest hockey accomplishment is catching a puck at a game once, got blocked on Twitter by the most valuable organization in the NHL. An Original Six team. I also got eviscerated by four or five Rangers fans within 35 seconds of that tweet going up, which says a lot about their fan base.

Next. A Betting Guide On The New Jersey Devils. dark

I must have been on to something with my not-so-subtle call out of the Rangers Twitter game. Either that, or whoever runs the account is a weasel. It’s probably the latter.

All I know is that this has juiced me up even more for the regular season to start. We all know that from day one it’s going to be Hughes vs. Kakko, Subban vs. Trouba, this vs. that, on and on for the entire season. The rivalry has already reached a peak it hasn’t reached since 2012, and we haven’t played a game yet. The rise of social media has certainly made it easier for fans to go at it.

October 17 can’t come soon enough. We’ll take a preseason tilt tomorrow in the meantime.

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