I remember walking around my old neighborhood in suburban New Jersey with a pair of headphones on, trying to keep the static to a minimum as I listened to Mike Francesa and Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo on WFAN out of the Big Apple.
It was Sept. 1991. In between discussions about whether Gregg Jefferies could ever be a competent second baseman for the Mets and if the Knicks were one player away from getting Patrick Ewing his ring, there was actually some hockey talk. And it went a little something like this:
Mike: "Dog, this just in: Arbitrator Judge Edward J. Houston has awarded Scott Stevens to the Devils from the Blues as compensation for Brendan Shanahan."
Dog: "I just don't think Kevin Bass offers Will Clark much protection in the Giants' lineup, do you Mikey?" (Just kidding.)
As a Devils fan, I remember being shocked. Not that the judge had decided Stevens — rather than St. Louis' offer of Rod Brind'Amour, Curtis Joseph, and two conditional draft picks — was proper compensation for the Blues' pilfering of rising star Shanahan from New Jersey. Rather, I was stunned that WFAN (or really any New York media outlet) was discussing the Devils outside of their annual games against the Rangers and Islanders.
In 1991, the Devils were known for four things:
1. Being an organization Wayne Gretzky famously called "Mickey Mouse," which is akin to Julia Child comparing your soufflé to a piece of cat feces.
2. One gloriously-memorable appearance in the 1988 postseason that captivated the hockey world until the team came up short in the conference finals against Boston. So like San Jose, Minnesota, and dozens of other Cinderellas who never made it to the ball, the Devils were soon forgotten.
3. Being the team with all those Russians.
4. Not being the Rangers, whose formidable shadow stretched all the way through the Lincoln Tunnel and covered the franchise and its fan base.
Stevens changed all of that. He gave this franchise a face, a name, a personality. He gave it an attitude, a focus, a temperament. He gave it everything he had for 13 seasons, and there is a trio of Stanley Cup championship banners dangling from the Meadowlands' rafters that might as well have his picture on them.
Stevens retired this week. He's going to enter the Hockey Hall of Fame as the best defenseman of his generation. Ray Bourque was the best player who happened to also play defense — but if you needed a shadow, needed a stop, needed someone knocked out, you wanted Stevens. The fact he never won a Norris Trophy basically makes that award irrelevant.
There was a time when Stevens didn't have the gravitas he has today. His career, in many ways, mimicked the path the Devils have taken as a franchise over the last two decades: young hothead with enormous potential who only found a way to win after finding that delicate balance between discipline and intensity.
When the Devils plucked him from the Blues, he didn't want to come to New Jersey. (Insert stereotypical joke about the smell, please.) He was stunned, bitter. His agent threatened a boycott that would only end if general manager Lou Lamoriello traded Stevens back to St. Louis.
Before training camp ended in 1991, Stevens arrived. He ended up third on the team with 124 penalty minutes.
Every single season after that, Stevens's penalty minute total would decrease. Like the Devils, he was figuring out a way to play his style of hockey without playing reckless hockey, and the team that was all-too-easily goaded into taking a bad penalty in a critical spot was maturing along with him.
By 1995, Stevens had become the cornerstone of an impressive defensive unit. Players like Ken Daneyko and Bruce Driver had been with New Jersey for over a decade. They were great players, but they weren't stars. Stevens was, and he made the entire unit better.
One of his greatest moments as a Devil came that season in the Stanley Cup playoffs, against Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference finals. Stevens was skating out from behind his own net to the left wing boards. Flyers center Eric Lindros — who, at the time, was running as many players a game as Stevens did as a rookie with Washington — went from meandering in front of the net to a full-on speed skate toward Stevens. The Devils captain moved the puck ahead, and was promptly battered by a Lindros elbow to the face.
The fans cheered, the referee raised his arm for a penalty ... and Stevens laughed. Getting off the ice, adjusting his helmet, bleeding from a cut above his right eye, Stevens had a grin of satisfaction that can only come when a player knows he hasn't just gotten into the head of his opponent, but has set up a base camp in his cerebral cortex.
It was a perfect example of what Devils hockey had become. Those legions of jealous fans that slam New Jersey for "clutch and grab trap hockey" never understood how oxymoronic that stereotype is. The trap, when the Devils actually did use the system, demanded quickness and the ability to transition from offense to defense. While any Neanderthal, or Tie Domi, can water-ski behind an opponent with the hook of his stick all game, playing solid defensive hockey is much more cerebral. With Stevens leading the charge, the Devils turned it into an art form.
(And like most art, it was boring. At times, really boring. I'm fan enough to admit it. Rooting for the Devils is like being a soccer fan: the nuances of the game are sublime to the partisans and painful to the masses. But would I trade three Cups for some flashy Gary Bettman hockey piece of garbage that scores eight goals a game and gives up just as many? Hell no!)
The term "lead by example" is a bit of a cliché, especially when coaches often use it to cover for a player who simply doesn't have the balls to lead in the locker room. But for Stevens, it fit: he wasn't the ultimate "rah-rah" guy. It's what he did on the ice, and when he did it, that counted. Like that goal against Pittsburgh in the '95 playoffs. Like laying out Kozlov in the 1995 Finals, and then saying "you're next" to the Red Wings' bench. Or in 2000, teaching Lindros to never put his head down in the middle of the ice during the playoffs.
How much Stevens contributed to New Jersey's success is up for discussion. In Devils' fan circles, it's an endless debate, like Bud vs. Miller, "The Godfather Part I" vs. "The Godfather Part II," "Sonny vs. Sammy" (for you Redskins fans), and "Joel vs. Mike" (you my fellow MST3K fans).
The debate? Martin Brodeur vs. The System.
You can't have it both ways. Either Marty Brodeur is one of the greatest goalies in the history of hockey, or he's the direct beneficiary of a defensive system and all-star players like Stevens and Scott Niedermayer in front of him.
Stevens and Niedermayer are gone. So perhaps the debate ends this season.
Wherever this franchise is headed, Stevens personified the Devils during his time in New Jersey. Like Jason Kidd personified the Nets. Like Joe Namath personified the Jets.
When Namath left, so did the team's counter-culture tenacity. They became just another team with a glorious past.
As a Devils fan, I hope history doesn't repeat itself.
As For the Super Bowl...
I actually heard someone — and I think it was Dan Patrick — say they'd take the Ravens to win it all if Trent Dilfer, rather than Kyle Boller, was the quarterback.
Please. Boller hasn't exactly had an embarrassment of riches in the receiving corps. Dilfer, amazingly, had more talent when the Ravens won the Super Bowl in 2000, and his top receiver was Qadry Ismail.
That changes this year for Boller. Out goes choke artist Travis Taylor, in come Derrick Mason and rookie Mark Clayton. The offense, under new coordinator Jim Fassel and powered by some kid named Jamal Lewis, is going to be better than expected.
The defense, meanwhile, will be the best in football.
So I like the Ravens out of the AFC. What about the NFC?
The talk begins, and ends, with Philly.
As much as it pains me to see them succeed (c'mon, I'm Central Jersey, not South Jersey), there's simply no other team in the conference with the balance and talent of the Eagles.
I don't buy into this T.O./Donovan McNabb circus. It's a tad ridiculous to think that, when push comes to shove, these guys aren't going to function as professionals. I do buy the fact that McNabb has yet to prove he can lead a team to a ring.
So it'll be the Battle of the Birds in the Bowl. And what about the Patriots?
Well, as I edit this piece, the Oakland/New England game is on in the background. And for the first time in four seasons, they just called a defensive holding penalty on a Patriots cornerback.
So maybe, just maybe, things will be different this year.
Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History" will be published in Spring 2006. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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