@StanFischler Ever since Lou Lamoriello became Devils major domo in 1987, New Jersey’s National Hockey League team has bragged about its “brand,” or, to put it another way, what the club is all about. In its most basic form, the perennial theme about Garden State hockey has been DEFENSE FIRST. Those who have been […]
@StanFischler Two of the more perplexing questions confronting any hockey coach are: 1. When does he start his backup goalie in a tense rivalry game? 2. At what point in such a game does he yank a supposedly slumping netminder? These two challenges were presented to John Tortorella on the night of Dec. 2, […]
@StanFischler Viktor Kozlov. There have been others like him in different sports. For baseball, it was Clint Hartung and Dick Wakefield. Nicknamed “The Hondo Hurricane”, Hartung was to be a superhero for the New York Giants, but emerged as more hot air than hotshot. Dick Wakefield got the biggest bonus in baseball history from […]
@StanFischler There are many ways to describe Sean Avery depending on your rooting interest. For example you can include his personality, his outlook on life, as well as your view of hockey decorum and personal fan favorites. Because of his idiosyncratic behavior — mostly as a Ranger — Avery has alternately been called Puck’s […]
@StanFischler If ever the bromide “Turnabout is fair play” had relevance to a hockey rivalry it was amply demonstrated by the annual war game on ice played by the Rangers and Islanders between the months of March 1993 and April 1994. And if a single game could crystallize the enmity that stirred adrenaline between […]
Rangers–Islanders, April 2, 1993, was extra-special for a lot of reasons: 1. A playoff berth was at stake: 2. The team with the NHL’s best record a year earlier was up against an upstart club that didn’t even make the playoffs in the previous season; and 3. The fallout from a midseason Rangers coach-firing still […]
@StanFischler To best understand and appreciate the Rangers’ playoff series victory over New Jersey in the Spring of 1992, one must turn back the calendar to the Autumn of 1991; specifically Oct. 5 The fallout from one of the most arresting trades in NHL history still was reverberating around the hockey world all because […]
@StanFischler Only on the rarest of occasions will a single playoff-game result not only in long-term effects on both hockey clubs but actually inspire one team’s moves — in this case, the Rangers — that would eventually lead it to win a Stanley Cup. It wasn’t evident at the time but the Rangers ‘6-5 […]
@StanFischler Something new had developed in the Rangers-Devils rivalry that would affect the teams for almost two decades. That was the arrival of Martin Brodeur as New Jersey’s premier puck-stopper. The affable French-Canadian from Montreal made a brief debut during the 1991-92 season, but really didn’t emerge as a factor until the 1993-1994 season. […]
If blood, guts and assorted forms of mayhem can characterize a hockey rivalry, none do it better than the 1990 Rangers-Islanders set-to. It all culminated on April 9, 1990, with an Islanders victory in double overtime, but the events that preceded it caused hospital visits, vitriol between management and coaches and a curious on-the-air battle […]