AS the Devils just go to show you once every five years, if it’s not one thing while they are winning the championship, it’s another.
In 1995, the Stanley Cup almost wound up as a floor ashtray in the lobby of the Grand Ole Opry. This time, the team has been sold to local interests who may be a little too interested in the day-to-day operations for Lou Lamoriello, the club’s architect, to want to stick around. He may just take the first nickel he ever denied Patrik Sundstrom and leave.
Of course, Lamoriello’s work is currently looking so immaculate, one would think he could negotiate even more autonomy than John Wensink used to enjoy at team socials. The last thing Lamoriello ever intends to endure is to pick up a paper and read: “My hockey people tell me that this Yashin isn’t worth our last two first-round picks, so I went along with it. They had better be right.”
If the team president really still is on the fence about staying on, he could get a little misty-eyed on the reviewing stand just like he did in 1995, when at least 13 people showed up outside the arena following a victory motorcade that spun around the Meadowlands parking lot even faster than Latrell Sprewell can drive to Knicks practice.
Lamoriello said later that seeing the support was a turning point in turning down Nashville, along with almost $7 million in concessions and a re-worked lease, of course.
It looked really bad there for a while, the Devils sweeping the Red Wings while price tags hung, ala Minnie Pearl, off their helmets; owner John McMullen saying things in the victorious locker room like “this is the suitest day of my life” and Johnny Cash singing “New Jersey and You, Perfect Together” to open the victory celebration.
But the Devils didn’t go and good thing, too, now that they are about to win one without contemptuously blasting moving van exhaust in their loyalists’ faces.
Truth is, there were 25,000 fans at the celebration in 1995, tendering a lot more love than the Devils really deserved. Lamoriello was pushing for the move and the players, being players, really didn’t care if they went. They understood themselves to be in transient jobs. As long as their contracts were going to be transferred, so, easily would be their loyalties.
“Our focus was on winning and [the move] was something that was out of our control,” said Marty Brodeur. “[The story broke] during the playoffs, when really, all we were thinking about was hockey.
“If we had heard about it during the season, I think we would have talked about it more and maybe it would have been a distraction. I put it out of my mind because I don’t think I really believed it was going to happen.”
Ken Daneyko, the oldest living Devil, with deep business and personal ties in North Jersey, agreed that ignorance was bliss. “We didn’t really realize how close it was,” he said.
But while court proceedings aimed at binding the Devils to their lease began the very day of the parade, Daneyko admitted to not having a pang of melancholy during what had a good chance at being a farewell rally.
“Absolutely not,” said Daneyko. “I wouldn’t have blamed [McMullen] at all for moving. He was getting shafted by the sports authority.”
Business is business. McMullen, who has a martyr complex as big as the Meadowlands complex about never being adequately thanked for bringing the team here from Denver, is pocketing $175 million from the sale to YankeeNets. He also still has eyes out for another NHL franchise, so it’s hard to get too misty-eyed for the old man as he bows out in what seems like perfect time.
The persons who most deserve another Devils’ title are the fans whose only way to avoid having their parties pooped in 1995 was to stay in denial about the move. Since then, they have endured a season of no playoffs – which most would agree was less painful than losing to the Rangers in 1997 – plus two first-round meltdowns and a blown 15-point lead for this season’s conference championship.
It’s always been hard being a Devils fan. Certainly, he draws no great strength from numbers. A team that sold out only two regular-season games this season, which had 4,000 empty seats for the playoff opener, has never provided a big-time offensive star with which its diehards could bond, nor forked over a single playoff series victory over the Rangers. And then the one time the Devils did win it all, the bastards turned the parade route into what looked suspiciously like an escape route.
Players win for themselves and each other, not for the franchise that inevitably will discard them if they don’t discard it first. Owners buy and sell businesses, use leverage wherever available. Fans endure like Devils’ supporters have, making their unconditional love much lovelier this second time around.
