On Tuesday, the New York Rangers play our New Jersey Devils for the first time in the season. After a offseason full of fireworks, which one will come out on top in the long haul?
The New Jersey Devils biggest rival is the New York Rangers. There is zero argument there. Devils fans hate the Philadelphia Flyers. Many of them hate the New York Islanders, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals. None of that matters, because the Rangers are far and away the biggest rivals for Jersey’s Team.
There are literally hundreds of moments in this rivalry that define it. There are the huge moments that changed who won the Stanley Cup (Henrique, It’s Over or Mark Messier‘s guarantee) to those that are inconsequential (a 10-player fight to start off the game or Sean Avery‘s idiotic shenanigans). Every season, there seems to be another major headline in the Hudson River Rivalry.
This season, things went up a notch. It was literally anything you could do I can do better, but in a hockey front office. The Rangers win the second-overall pick, the Devils go and get first overall. New York trades for Jacob Trouba while the Devils pick up P.K. Subban. The Rangers spend big on Russian winger Artemi Panarin. The Devils go and trade for Nikita Gusev. It’s literally tit for tat this entire offseason.
So, the real question we want to know is who came out on top? Obviously, we have to play the games, but which team came out of the offseason looking better? Somehow, the Devils seemed to steal the headlines from their big-city rival, but did they come out with a better team?
Let’s take a look position by position to compare the Devils and the Rangers: