New Jersey

Lore & Background

When the NHL brought a team to New Jersey in 1982 via relocation from Colorado, the franchise was meant to be a placeholder—a way to keep the sport visible in a state that already had the Rangers and the Islanders. The Devils were given a name that was deliberately provocative, a logo that was deliberately ugly, and a color scheme that was deliberately loud. The early years in the Meadowlands were defined by chaos, by a building that shared a parking lot with Giants Stadium (home of the New York Giants), by fans who packed the arena with a blue-collar energy that matched the team's underdog spirit. The team was bad, often brutally bad, and the fans loved them for it. There was a punk-rock energy to those first seasons, a refusal to be polished or corporate.

The transformation came in the mid-1990s. Scott Stevens took the captaincy and turned a group of role players into a unit that played with a mean, structured intensity. Scott Niedermayer became the most complete defenseman of his generation. And then there was Martin Brodeur, a young Canadian who arrived in 1992 and played through 2014 (with a final season in St. Louis), whose goaltending was less a craft and more a force of nature. By the time the Devils lifted the Stanley Cup in 1995 and again in 2000, the franchise had shed its relocated-team identity and become a genuine powerhouse. The 2003 Cup, won in a seven-game series against the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, sealed the dynasty and gave New Jersey a third championship that felt earned in the hardest possible way.

The rivalry with the New York Rangers is the emotional spine of the franchise. It is a rivalry of proximity, of geography, of two states that share a river and a hatred. Rangers-Devils games in the early 2000s were physical, loud, and often ugly in the best way. The rivalry with the Islanders, though less intense in recent decades, carries the weight of the 1980s, when New Jersey fans still remembered the Islanders' four consecutive Cups and felt a lingering need to prove the state could produce its own dynasty. The Devils did, and the proof still hangs in the rafters of the Prudential Center.

Reader's Guide

The Prudential Center in Newark is a modern, enclosed arena, but the soul of Devils hockey lives in the details. The seats are red and black, the boards are painted in the team's signature palette, and the jumbotron flashes the devil logo in a way that makes the whole building pulse. The ice is bright under the lights, a white rectangle that makes the red jerseys pop with an almost violent clarity. Sticks crack against the boards with a sound that carries to the upper deck. The puck is a small, black, fast thing that you track with your eyes and feel in your gut.

The fans are not polite. They are loud, they are close, and they are specific in their hatred of the other team. A Rangers player who takes a penalty draws a sound that is not a boohoo but a sustained, guttural groan from the entire section. A Devils goal draws a roar that is almost physical, a wave of noise that rolls through the rafters and back down. The concourses smell of beer, of hot dogs, of the particular musty sweetness of a crowded arena in the winter. The air is cold near the glass, warm in the stands, and the transition between the two is a small, sharp shock.

New Jersey fans do not dress up for hockey. They come in work boots, in flannel, in the same jacket they wore to the job. The jerseys are worn, the logos faded, the numbers cracked. This is not a fashion statement. This is a declaration. You are here because you are from here, and the devil on the logo is not a mascot. It is a mirror.

Did You Know?

• The Devils won the Stanley Cup in 1995, 2000, and 2003—but fell short of a repeat in 2001, losing to the Colorado Avalanche in the Finals.
• The team moved from the Meadowlands to the Prudential Center in Newark in 2007, not 2002.
• Martin Brodeur played for the Devils from 1992 to 2014, then finished his career with the St. Louis Blues in 2014–15—making him a fixture in New Jersey for over two decades.