The Rivalry

"Whenever we played the Rangers, you knew it beforehand. Everything was different. Preseason, regular season, playoffs, home, road, it didn't matter. Records? Throw them out. They were New York. We were New Jersey. They were established. We weren't. There was always a feeling that if we're going to do anything in this league, we're going to have to go through them. They were our biggest rival."

— BILL GUERIN, NEW JERSEY DEVILS (1991–98)

Dr. John McMullen brought the new kid to school on June 30, 1982.

He wasn't all that talented to begin with, he wasn't a hit with the others at recess right off the bat, and he always showed up in a strange red-and-green outfit.

Clearly, the New Jersey Devils arrived with a few strikes against them.

Indeed, it was tough for McMullen's dream on ice to find its way in the New York–New Jersey metropolitan area, much less in the National Hockey League. Formerly the Colorado Rockies, and the Kansas City Scouts before them, this was a vagabond franchise that McMullen purchased, one that had never truly tasted success. And even if it had, no one would have cared.

"We were a mess in the early years," said former Devils defenseman Ken Daneyko, who is now a television analyst for the franchise. "We had a lot of learning to do, a lot of growing. And most people around the National Hockey League thought we'd never reach our potential."

But McMullen, a New Jersey native who gained his fortune in the shipping business, always saw promise in moving the team to East Rutherford, a gritty commuter town of some 8,000 residents in Bergen County, overlooking the skyline of Manhattan. He saw opportunity in the Meadowlands Sports Complex, where the NFL's New York Giants and the NBA's New Jersey Nets had already taken up residence.

It didn't matter to him that the Meadowlands was built on swampland, smack dab in the middle of major highways, a hub for exhaust, waste, and traffic with very little fanfare around it. Let's face it — the place didn't scream out "hockey heaven" to anyone.

It didn't matter to him that the franchise had only produced one playoff season in eight years in Kansas City and Colorado.

And it definitely didn't matter to him that the New York Rangers, an Original Six franchise with as loyal a following as you'll find in the NHL, played just six miles away in the heart of the biggest city in the world.

But it probably should have.

"Say what you will, it was a tough hill to climb," said Gary Thorne, a former television play-by-play man for the Devils. "They were the redheaded stepchildren. No doubt about it. It was going to take a long time for them to gain the respect of the area, and certainly of the Rangers."

Indeed, the Rangers saw the Devils as nothing more than a gnat on their windshield in the 1980s. Wipe 'em off and move on down the New Jersey Turnpike. Heck, before the Devils were even allowed to migrate to New Jersey under McMullen's wing, the Rangers had to grant them permission through the NHL due to the proximity to New York.

They granted it, of course, without hesitation. What did they have to lose, right?

That was an attitude that carried from the locker room to the ice to the stands. While the team that called Madison Square Garden home hardly was a giant success among hockey circles, the Rangers and their fans certainly acted as if they were. You would think that sort of smugness and a cocksure attitude would be supported by layers of championships. But, no. While New York had three Stanley Cup titles to its name, the last one had come in 1940, the same year that Abbott & Costello debuted ... on radio.

But none of that mattered to Rangers fans. They were sure of themselves, year in and year out. In fact, in the early 1980s, the Rangers were a consistent playoff-caliber team, make no mistake. But the New York Islanders, tucked away in Uniondale, New York, were the league standard. The Isles were on their way to four straight Stanley Cup championships, a run unmatched today in any major professional sports league.

The Islanders were the kings of hockey. But not the kings of their own city.

That title belonged to the cult and the culture of the red, white, and blue: the Broadway Blueshirts could walk around town with their heads held high in good times and bad, no matter what. They gathered the headlines and the hugs, and there wasn't a thing anyone could do about it.

"Throughout the years, you had to give the Rangers fans credit," said Mike Francesa, the afternoon talk show host for WFAN-AM 660 in New York. "They suffered through all the years of heartbreak, but kept coming back. They loved that team and loved to tell people about it."

To be sure, in that suddenly crowded schoolyard that was New York–area hockey, the Islanders were the whiz kids, the Devils were the new kids, and the Rangers? Well, they were the cool kids.

"They were an annoyance at first, really. Nothing more," Joe Benigno said of the Devils, echoing the sentiment of legions of Rangers fans at the time. Benigno should know. He cultivated a talk show career at WFAN based on his loud, proud — and often panicked — view of his teams, which includes the Rangers. "All the Devils really provided, at first, was a place to see the Rangers a few more times."

Which was true, of course. Rangers home games were always a tough, pricey ticket — even in the city's lean times — so a few more contests on the other side of the Hudson River allowed Rangers fans the chance to infiltrate someone else's building and watch their pride and joy take the ice. It was truly a bizarre environment to witness, and the phenomenon continues to this day. Whenever the Rangers and Devils meet in New Jersey, there are always a large number of New York fans in the building.

From 1982 through 2007, the Devils called the Meadowlands home. They played in what was originally called the Brendan Byrne Arena, named after the New Jersey governor, which was eventually changed to Continental Airlines Arena.

Whatever the official name was, it was often given a bad name around the league because of its poor ice conditions, lack of atmosphere, and far too many empty seats among its capacity of 19,040.

But it was different when the Rangers came to town. You have to remember that the Rangers, in many ways, were a regional team, and still are. And you have to understand the perspective from which Rangers fans — some of whom may have actually lived in New Jersey — approached this new team, this new era of hockey.

There were some converts, clearly. The Devils' presence, for many New Jersey hockey fans, meant a more affordable, more convenient way of seeing the sport they loved. But for those born and bred into Rangers Nation, those who lived and died with...