Devils Fan Guide: Why We Love the Devils

It’s a bit hazy but I think around 8 or 9 (as a point of reference I was born in 79 so we are talking 87 or 88) and I had already become a Nets fan. I used to listen to my radio at night, a little hand held unit, and I was trying to tune into the Nets game and landed on the Devils game instead. I had known about hockey and seen a game or two on TV but for whatever reason I couldn’t stop listening. The Devils were rolling. They were up 3-1 or 4-1 on Pittsburgh and I thought that this team must be really good! Then they blew it They let up something like 3 or 4 unanswered goals and I was devastated. For whatever reason after that heartbreaking loss I was hooked. (As a side note the goalie that night was Craig Billington. From that point on he was always one of my favorite goalies and I followed his career to Colorado, Ottawa, Boston & Washington)

After that since the Devils were on SportsChannel (paycable station that we couldn’t afford) so I was forced to listen to all of the games on the radio, but I still loved it. I was at the radio for the majority of the 89 playoff run until the late 90’s or whenever they became available for me to watch on a regular basis.

I guess I was lucky that no one in my family had a huge affinity for any hockey team and steered me towards the Rangers or Islanders instead of me finding the Devils on my own.

I was 6. My aunt, uncle, and cousins (1 older, 1 younger) always used to come “down the shore” once the weather started to get nice. Usually they would stay Thursday to Sunday. That particular weekend though, my elder cousin didn’t want to get into the car so he could watch…a hockey game?!? Me knowing little about the game, the teams in the area, I was curious to sit along and watch. When I saw NJ Devils @ NY Rangers, I immediately said to my cousin, “Let’s Go Devils.” He looked at me like I had 3 heads. He was a Ranger fan..In New Jersey!! I would have that debate with him for years. It never made sense to me that a New Jersian would be a fan of a NY team when NJ has their very own. (For the record, my younger cousin is a Flyers fan – Worst Family Ever??)

We started watching the game and I WAS COMPLETELY ADDICTED TO IT. My cousin and I were rivals in everything, and this just added to it. The goaltending, the hitting, the plays, the game itself were all incredible. Devils won 4-3 in 2OT. Lemieux scored in the final minute of the 3rd, and Richer beat Graves and Richter to win it.

After that series, I was a Devils Fan and a Rangers Hater. I honestly think if the Devils won that series and possibly the Cup that year, I’m not the type of Devils fan (or sports fan for that matter) I am today.

I used to live in New York and had a lot of family in New Jersey. Moved to Denver in 1990 and the hockey team was the Colorado Rockies. As we all know they eventually moved to New Jersey. Then when they won their first stanley cup with Jacques Lemaire at the helm I watched the series with Detroit on ESPN. I was really impressed with they stifled the Red Wings attack and how sound they were defensively. After they swept Detroit I was hooked and have been a diehard fan ever since. Also having the greatest goaltender ever has also helped. I am a firm believer in the Devil system of hockey and when they are on their game they can play with anybody and beat anybody. For many years I could not watch them unless they were in the playoffs or on ESPN. Now with nhl center ice I never miss a game.. I am very lucky indeed to be able to see greatness on ice every season now. Devils fan for life win or lose….

Growing up in Calgary with zero interest in hockey. My bro picked up NHL94, and I started playing against him just for the hell of it. I settled on the Devils because I thought their logo was amazing (I was 6, ok? :P). Haven’t let go since, and still think their logo is just as amazing as I did 16 years ago.

I’m sure I’ve related the story on this site before, so I’ll given the shortened version:

My father was and is a Rangers fan, but absolutely hated going into the city to catch games at MSG. When the Devils moved into the, then, Brenden Byrne Arena, he’d take a much younger me (I was about 8-10) to the nearly empty arena when the Rangers came to visit.

I always had a blast, even though I didn’t really fully grasp the sport, and one of my favorite parts was how all of the kids would leave their seats in the nosebleeds and head down to the ramps and try to get game pucks and whatnot. On one occasion, one of the crew gave me a goalie stick Chico Resch had broken during the game, and that act secured the team in my good graces for life.

As I got older and other things caught my interest, the oft difficult to find on TV and hardly publicized sport of hockey faded into the background while I grew to love football and girls and video games and girls and… well, you get the picture.

Eventually, I grew tired, and somewhat bored, with football and other sports and hockey recaught my attention. Unfortunately, at that time I lived on the other side of the country and the only way I could catch Devils games was to listen to the radio broadcast streamed online.

Life brought me back to NJ some years ago, though when people ask why I moved back I usually say, “the food and the Devils” (there’s no such thing as a good bagel on the West coast, pizza only comes from supermarkets or chain restaurants, and no one out there has any clue what Taylor Ham is).

Aside from that, though, regionalism is, I’ve always thought, a pretty silly reason to like a team. Sure, it makes it easier to watch games (though even that isn’t so true anymore what with all the means of following teams from anywhere nowadays), but liking a team just because they’re the team from your area always struck me (no offense intended to anyone) as a pretty shallow reason.

I like the Devils, not just because they were my first team and because some random stranger once gave me a broken Chico Resch goalie stick, but also because:

• my dad is a Rangers fan and as a kid I had to be different (he’s a Giants fan, too, so I went with the Redskins—save the jokes, I’ve heard them all before)

• the team name. The Devils? Come on. It doesn’t get any better than that. Who hasn’t, as a kid, picked games based purely on what the team’s mascot is? (Sharks would beat a Penguin every time, etc. What could possibly beat a Devil?)

• The logo. It showed state pride and I was always proud of my home state.

• The team’s philosophies are in line with my personal philosophies, and if I ever somehow got the keys to a franchise, I would build it just as the Devils have been built.

• I’m a fan of Lou

• The great rivalries with the Rangers and Flyers and Islanders, which are compounded and amplified by the proximity of those teams and their fan bases

• The Underdog Effect — The Devils are always the underdog, and who doesn’t like an underdog?

it was simply when John McMullen bought the Colorado Rockies and moved them to NJ. I was a young adult in 1982 (just 22 when the season started), still in college but with a part time job that left me enough spare cash. One of the guys I worked with was, if I recall correctly, a Ranger fan, and a ew of us went in on a partial season plan. It must have been 6 or 10 games. I was never a hockey fan before. Yeah it was cool when the US won the gold in ‘80, but we didn’t have a home town team so I wasn’t really interested. But then the Devils came and I was hooked for life. How about a few blasts from the past? Props to anyone who can identify what/who these are.

Starting easy: Don Lever
Rocky Trottier (No, not Bryan)
Yvon Vatour
Win cards
Ice World
Rona Klinghoffer
Maine Mariners
Hector Marini

I listed my reason for being a Devils’ fan in response to the head blogger of Broad Street Hockey the post is entitled,
“A differing perspective.”

Short answer: I love New York City and Philadelphia, but I’m from New Jersey.

I used to hate hockey when growing up. I never played it before and didn’t understand some of my friends when they would buy sticks and a street hockey ball and play on their sneakers. That was high school, that was the early 90’s. Then a few years later, I went to a Canucks game while visiting Vancouver, and fell in love with the game (while falling in love with my wife to be). The sheer athleticism needed, not to mention skill, not to mention it helps if you can beat someone up too, just got me into hockey. Hockey become a something like finesse within chaos. That was ‘98. Long story short, my then girlfriend (now wife) who lived in Vancouver moved here and we settled down (to this day i might add) in north NJ area near Giants stadium. (I was settled here from living here all my life I should say). Her first year here she was homesick and missing her family (to give a time reference, it was the first season after the lockout). Well I couldn’t do anything about the missing family part, but I did take her to a Devils/Canucks game since she used to go to games back in Van. I became a die hard fan that day. My initial love of hockey, found a purpose in supporting MY local team. Jersey’s team. I kind of took pride in that, as I learned about our great goal tender, our young stars like gomez, and our legends like Stevens who came to Jersey to follow and realize their dreams. Didn’t hurt that we won cups in very recent times too but I didn’t take part in those glory days and raising of the cups. With me becoming a fan, that game turned out to be more of a present for me but she enjoyed the game too despite a Canucks loss (which at the time was the 9th win in a row for the Devs). (she now cheers the Devils too unless they play the Nucks.)

Well, so I guess my reason is, because the Devils are indeed JERSEY’s TEAM and I’m proud that they are. (I don’t mean to sound elitist because I also appreciate the fans of Devils who live world wide—thank you for supporting!)

From Burlington County diagonal to Atlantic County and down, the Devils’ aren’t South Jersey’s team. It is solidly Flyer country and won’t change unless the local cable companies decide to let those people get MSG or the local papers start to cover them. Having said that, I love the marketing of “Jersey’s team.” If we can make a couple South Jersey Flyer fans feel guilty and definitely make Ranger fans question their Jersey pride, then I’m all for it.

If I was working for them, I would get:

Bruce Springsteen
Jon Bon Jovi
Kevin Smith
Greg Wyshynski
the guys from this blog
Whoopi Goldberg

and ask them why they love the Devils and make it into a 10-minute youtube clip and let it go viral.

We owe Doc a huge thanks for the publicity he has given us during the Olympics. When he mentions a Devil or former Devil he praises Lou and the organization for making them the player they are.

1) Not just winning, but sweeping a very powerful Red Wings team in 1995.
2) 2000 Conference championship against the Flyers. Coming back from down 3-1. Guts. Grit. That really sealed it for me because I was becoming somewhat disollusioned (sp?) after the early exits in the 97, 98 and 99 playoffs. I shared season tickets with my wife’s family for the 97-98 and 98-99 seasons and those teams were really a huge disappointment after such good regular seasons. So to finally break through in a dramatic way was a big demonstration of character
3) Clearly live by the team first attitude. No egos allowed
4) Marty. You have to love the fact that the guy is going to spend his whole career here. Just shows that this team has a core value of mutual committment between the players and management. I am not the kind to rail against free agency, but it is really enjoyable to have some constancy with a few core players in the age of player movement
5) Being the underdog and a bit of a hidden jem. Personally, I take a bit of pride out of the fact that the Devils play 2nd fiddle to the Rangers, despite being the cleary better and more successful organization. Its kind of like having a band or musician you really like that is unknown. It is like your own special secret. That probably sounds a bit wierd

I’ll add the stories later, but a lot of you hit on some good points – so I’ve included them as best as I could.

Keep bringing me more; I’ll probably end it in the coming week.

1993, my wife needed to study for the LSAT exam and needed me and my energetic 5 year old son out of the house. We’d been to all of the kids movies and the only activity I could find that might be interesting was the Devils game. Neither of us had ever been to a hockey match. I popped for good seats, 3rd row in the offensive end, right corner. This was before the netting was up and my son got a loose puck. The Devils were down by one with 2.8 seconds left and they scored off of a faceoff in our corner to tie the game, which they won in OT. I had never been to a sport where there was nonstop action, with amazing speed and athleticism. Seeing the checks against the boards by the crash line of Peluso, McKay and Holik was awesome. I had been a baseball fan before that. How could you compare the speed of play with a pitch being thrown, the batter stepping put to rearrange his cup, another pitch, the batter stepping out of the box to adjust his glove, stepping out again to throw off the pitchers timing….. it makes me want to take a nap. Compare this with the bang bang action in hockey; there is no comparison.

The next week I met Chris Terreri. His then fiance, now wife, was working as a dental hygienist for a friend of mine. I also met Randy McKay there. When I told them about how exciting my only NHL game was they got me tickets to the next game with passes to the room where the players wives and guests go between periods. I found the players to be regular, friendly guys. I was hooked and have become a season ticket holder since. I had asked Randy McKay where he liked to sit for games if he wasn’t suited up. He told me he liked the upper tier, first row in the corner because you see all of the action along the boards. These are now the seats that I have. I know sitting in the bowl is nice, but I prefer the seats I have and will never give them up.

I also like the class of the Devil’s organization. I like how players are Devils for life, even if they leave NJ for a while to play for another team. Players who have left the Devils have no problem returning to the organization. The draw of being a Devil for life has even turned Marty into a US citizen. He’s never leaving. We are Jersey’s team.