2. Rob Scuderi Penalty
This was more a moment than it was a game. The New Jersey Devils went down to the Los Angeles Kings 3-0 in the 2012 Stanley Cup Final. It looked like the special run that included beating both the team’s biggest rivals was going to end in a whimper. The Kings were just a force. The Devils did force overtime in Games 1 and 2, but they lost both at home.
However, like sports tend to do, hope came out of nowhere. The Devils stole a game in Los Angeles to bring it back to New Jersey. Then, they won their first Stanley Cup Final game at the Prudential Center. Now, the series was 3-2 and national analysts were talking about if the Devils could be the first team to erase a 3-0 deficit in the Stanley Cup Final.
Game 6 was chippy to start. Anton Volchenkov took a hooking penalty just three minutes into the game. That wasn’t the penalty that caused irrevocable pain for the Devils and its fanbase. It was the five-minute major assessed to Steve Bernier after his hit on Rob Scuderi. The issue wasn’t the hit. Obviously, it was a little too hard. However, to A. miss the hit two seconds ago on Stephen Gionta (he was hit headfirst into the boards in front of the bench), B. not calling icing on the play, and C. make this a major penalty. Scuderi stayed down, but he returned nefariously quickly.
The Kings scored three goals on the major penalty, and that basically ended the Stanley Cup Final. The Kings would win in the Staples Center like it was meant to be. Meanwhile, the Devils went home after the last run of Martin Brodeur’s career. This team was never the same, Zach Parise left for Minnesota, Ilya Kovalchuk retired a year later, the NHL went into a lockout right after all this, and the fanbase has been searching for the happy feeling that came from this run ever since.