January 26, 2014: Hockey at Yankee Stadium

January 26, 2014, 10 years ago: The NHL Stadium Series comes to the new Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

The New York Rangers are, by far, the oldest NHL team in the New York Tri-State Area. They were founded in 1926. The New York Americans were founded the year before, but went out of business in 1942. The New York Islanders were founded in 1972, and the Colorado Rockies moved to become the New Jersey Devils in 1982.

The Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1928, 1933 and 1940... and then not again until 1994, losing in the Finals in the interim in 1950, 1972 and 1979.

The Islanders won 4 straight Stanley Cups from 1980 to 1983, and made it back to the Finals in 1984. But, except for a run to the Conference Finals in 1993, hadn't done well since.

The Devils got to the Conference Finals in 1988 and 1994, and won the Cup in 1995, 2000 and 2003, also reaching the Finals in 2001 and 2012.

The Rangers have a contract that says that any game played away from their home arena, Madison Square Garden, must be considered an away game. Therefore, when the NHL set up their Stadium Series for Yankee Stadium in 2014, the Devils, despite being based in New Jersey, were the "home team" on January 26; and the Islanders were designated the "home team" on January 29.

Devils fans -- you gotta put the "S" on the end, so it doesn't look and sound like you're fans of The Devil -- and Islander fans have one thing in common: Both hate the Rangers. The 1994 double-overtime loss in Game 7 of the Conference Finals was, for Devils fans, what the 1951 loss in the National League Playoff to the baseball version of the New York Giants was for Brooklyn Dodger fans.

I mentioned this to my grandmother, who grew up in Queens as a Dodger fan, during the Rangers' early glory years, but she never took to hockey until long after she moved to New Jersey, and the Devils arrived. She had reason to be a Ranger fan, but she became a Devils fan. And she got the 1951/1994 analogy, and didn't think I was misunderstanding history.

(The fact that we both listened to our respective games on the radio helped the analogy. In 1951, she heard on the radio that Ralph Branca was coming in to pitch to Bobby Thomson, and turned the radio off. She knew Branca was going to give up a home run. And, in 1994, I still didn't have cable.)

So with the Devils playing the Rangers in Yankee Stadium -- albeit the new one -- I really, really wanted to win this game.

My Facebook entries for the day of the game tell the story:

"Half an hour to game time in Da Bronx. Let's go Devils! Beat The Scum!"

"Still early but I like what I'm seeing. Devils taking the game to 'em, not taking any of their crap, converting 2 good chances."

In the 1st 16 minutes and 7 seconds of the game, the Devils had gotten 2 goals from Patrik Eliáš, and 1 from Travis Zajac, against 1 from Dominic Moore. But it would be all Rangers from that point onward. With 3 minutes left in the 1st period, Marc Staal got them within 3-2.

"End of the 1st period. Devils 3, Rangers 2. Acceptable for the moment, but we need more goals, and we need to give Marty more defensive support."

Things fell apart. The 2nd period was a bloodbath. Goaltender Martin Brodeur, 41 years old and nearing the end of the line, was getting no support from the New Jersey defense. The Rangers got 2 goals from Mats Zuccarello, 1 from Carl Hagelin, and 1 from Rick Nash.

Eliáš agreed with me in a postgame interview: "That wasn't on Marty. We gave up way too many odd-man rushes."

My mother (daughter of the grandmother in question) has been known to jinx sports teams. She can turn a lead into a deficit just by walking into a room where a game is being watched on TV. In her junior year of high school, she went to every home football game, and they lost them all; in her senior year, she went to none, and they won all but one of them.

So, I wrote: "Ma, if you're watching this game, TURN IT OFF! You're jinxing us!"

As things got worse, I thought of the opening of the TV show Life On Mars, in which a New York cop gets hit by a car in 2008, and wakes up in 1973; and I thought of the play known as "The Miracle at the Meadowlands":

"My name is Michael Pacholek. I was in an accident, and I woke up in Giants Stadium on November 19, 1978.

If you're a Giants fan, you'll recognize the date. If you're a Devils fan, you'll understand completely."

Derek Stephan scored halfway through the 3rd period. When the carnage was over, the Rangers had won, 7-3:

"I'll have an Uncle Mike's Musings about the Devils Disgrace in Da Bronx later. But now, I'm sick of thinking about it. I'm going to see if I can recover my appetite. But the way this day is going, I'm not counting on whatever I eat tasting good."

Finally: "I wouldn't mind Ranger fans' monumental stupidity if it didn't come with overweening obnoxiousness. The problem is, a lot of them are also Yankee Fans, making them a lot smarter from April through October. But the Rangers have earned little of the arrogance that the Yankees have, and yet they take their Summer team's arrogance and apply it to their Winter team. One title in 74 years... Even the hopeless Mets are on a better pace than that!"

(And, by ever so slightly, so were the Jets, the Knicks, and, if you count the ABA, the Nets.)

And what did I write in my post on the game? Among other things, this:

It would have been bad enough if the Devils had given a good effort and that lot across the Hudson had simply outplayed us. I would have hated it, but I would have understood it. That's sports, you know: Sometimes you don't lose, sometimes the other team just plain beats you.

That was not the case this time.

This was an unacceptable performance.

This was the biggest embarrassment at Yankee Stadium since Kevin Brown and Javier Vazquez made it so easy for the Red Sox to put their cheating to good use on October 20, 2004.

The Devils embarrassed all of us today, from Hoboken to Hackettstown, from High Point to Atlantic City, from Trenton to the Tunnels, from Route 94 to I-195, from Route 29 to the Palisades Parkway.

It was bad enough that it was against The Scum, that lot across the river. But for the last 43 minutes (at which point 3-1 Devils became 3-2 Devils), there was no effort at all.

I also cited the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart," which Jim Steinman had written for Bonnie Tyler: "Once upon a time, there was light in my life. Now, there's only love in the dark."

Three days later, the Islanders were only slightly better, losing to the Rangers, 2-1. Neither the Devils nor the Islanders had played an outdoor game before, and neither has since. The Rangers are 4-0 in such games.

On February 17, 2024, as part of the NHL Stadium Series, MetLife Stadium in the Meadowlands, home of the Giants and the Jets, will be home for the Devils as they take on the Philadelphia Flyers. The next day, MetLife will host Rangers vs. Islanders.