NHL Fans vs NJ Devils—Case Closed: THEY ARE A BORE!

I once went to a Devils game and a soccer game broke out (on a portable TV). And like every other non-Devils fan, I watched the soccer game.

What the hell was I supposed to do? I had (pitch) forked over in excess of $150 for my seat, food, parking, red and black paint remover, etc., and I felt that I was entitled to see some kind of action with at least some chance of watching a goal being scored. But as has been the case for far too long, the action and goals were not coming on the ice of a Devils game.

Ever since Jacques Lemaire took over as the Devils head coach before the 1993-1994 season and implemented the dreaded Neutral Zone Trap (“Trap”), the NHL fans have been subjected to visual inertia, while being vanquished to the spectator’s version of Hockey Hades.

So boring is it to watch the Devils play in this type of system that among the more stimulating descriptions of it have been: “like playing in seaweed”, “like playing in quicksand”, “like watching paint dry”, “like watching snails race”, “like watching competitive sleeping”, “like watching a Curling match on freeze-frame”, etc.

Alright, I admit to making up the last three descriptions, but over the past 13 years I’ve heard these kinds of descriptions spoken and written many times (including last season by Islanders coach Ted Nolan)—and clearly they all fit.

Although not considered the originator of the Trap, Lemaire is truly the “anti-Christ” of Hockey (no religious context intended) for continuing to have the Devils use the Trap without any regard to the devastatingly evil domino effect it has had on the sport.

Since the NHL is a copycat league and the Devils won the Stanley Cup in 1995, more and more teams started to implement this stifling strategy. And as league expansion continued with its watered down talent pool, the newer teams and less talented teams were forced to play the Trap in order to attempt to stay competitive.

This, of course, led to the unwatchable, mind-numbing, listless, lifeless shell of a sport that the NHL had deteriorated into—until the rule changes following the 2004-2005 lockout brought back much of the excitement.

Although Lemaire resigned as Devils’ head coach in 1998, his willing disciple, GM “Lucifer Lou” Lamoriello, has maintained the tedious Trap tradition ever since—regardless as to which of his subservient, revolving door of coaches happens to be in place at the time (including himself on several occasions). This includes the Trap itself, as well as the Devils subsequent variations (“its variations”) of equally lackluster defensive schemes, like the all too familiar: 60 Minute Sit Back & Counterattack.

Now, I’m not knocking good, sound defensive hockey in general, as there have been countless teams who have won Stanley Cups by being among the top 5 defense teams in the league—but have done so with a style of play that does not lull hockey fans into a cataleptic trance. Some fairly recent examples include: the 1997 & 2002 Detroit Redwings, the 2001 Colorado Avalanche, and the 1994 New York Rangers.

The biggest problem that I have with the Trap and its variations, aside from them being so desperately dull to watch, is that they are a deliberate attempt to circumvent the “spirit of the game”.

Hockey is supposed to be a game of speed, skill and physicality that maintains an enjoyable flow of action. The Trap and its variations, although technically legal strategies, greatly reduce speed and skill, and almost completely eliminates the flow of action—thus leading to the descriptions listed above in the second paragraph. The closest equivalent of it in basketball would be the Four Corners Offense—always a fan favorite.

I don’t believe that it is a stretch at all to say that the Trap and its variations circumvent the “spirit of the game” every bit as much as if a hockey team was to find a 6’10” person who weighed 1,000 lbs, then fitted this person in custom made goalie equipment (within legal specifications) and had them lay sideways on the ice—blocking the entire net.

With the proper dimensions and pain tolerance, such a person could conceivably eliminate the other team from scoring. To the best of my knowledge, there is no NHL rule regulating the height and weight of goalies. Therefore, this would be a completely legal way of circumventing the “spirit of the game” in order to prevent goals against—just like the Trap and its variations.

In fact, given the choice between watching the Devils play and watching a game involving this mythical Behemoth Backstop, my slightly-warped sense of humor would probably choose the Behemoth Backstop. Somehow the chance of seeing all that rubber bouncing off all that blubber would just be too good to pass up.

What is amazing to me is how stubborn Lucifer Lou is about continuing to have his Devil teams seemingly try to play the game in the most boring possible style allowed by the new, post-lockout rules. Unquestionably, the post-lockout Devils are not as drab as their pre-lockout counterparts—but it’s not from lack of trying.

The current Devils are still the highlight of humdrum hockey. It’s just that the post-lockout rules, which effectively eliminate the redline, have no tolerance for clutching, grabbing and interference. Instead, they reward speed and skill, and have made the Trap and its variations much less effective than they used to be.

Yes, the Devils have still managed to be one of the better teams over the past two years, but who are they trying to fool—they didn’t come close to winning the Stanley Cup, losing in the second round both times. In the 2006 playoffs Carolina crushed them in 5 games, and in 2007 Ottawa did the same.

In both years there were many teams who would have beaten the Devils in the playoffs, and ultimately the teams that won (Carolina and Anaheim) were not driven by dreary, defense-only ideologies.

On top of being in post-lockout system shock, the Devils have another another serious problem—Martin Brodeur. Despite his stellar regular season performance, Brodeur’s 2007 playoff performance in many games was utterly pathetic. It was like the famous 1994 Stephane Matteau goal caught in a time loop from the abyss—only instead of Matteau scoring from a horrendous angle, it was Lightening and Senator players repeatedly doing the honors.

So with an aging Brodeur, no Scott Stevens, no Scott Niedermayer, no longer having a superior set of prospects to use as replacement parts, and no way to use a rule-circumventing Trap or its variations to systematically shutdown the opposition, there will be no more of Lord Stanley’s Cups for Lucifer Lou’s Devils.

In fact, despite Devil fans still being in the nether world over the following point, there are very few hockey fans or hockey experts who believe the Devils would have won any Stanley Cups at all without their pre-lockout, rule-circumventing Trap system—even though they’ve had some outstanding players, such as Brodeur, Stevens, Niedermayer, etc.

Furthermore, a strong case can be made that the Devils use of the Trap and its variations not only padded all of Brodeur’s statistics over the years (wins, shutouts, GAA, save percentage, etc.), but had he been playing for another (defensively loose) team in a non-Traplike environment, he may have never had a Hall of Fame career. Although to give this “Devil his due”, he has clearly been an excellent goalie.

You would think that as “times are a changing” in the NHL, Lucifer Lou would realize that his Devil teams now have as much chance of winning the Stanley Cup as the aforementioned 1,000 lb Behemoth Backstop has of gracefully “tiptoeing through the tulips”. And as a result, he might actually make some adjustments and change their style of play. But from all indications there is still no end in sight.

But as much as Lemaire and Lucifer Lou are to blame for the Devils previous and continued use of the Trap and its variations, the other party to blame for keeping the rest of the NHL fans in perpetual hockey puck purgatory is Devil fans themselves. How the hell could all those people put up with this stagnant, stale ice act for all those years? And to think that they actually spend their hard earned money on it.

The truth is, unlike many hockey fans, I actually don’t blame them (or even knock them) for painting their faces red and black. Obviously, they need some kind of diversion from the frozen farce of a game that’s taking place on the ice. What I do blame them for is allowing it to go on for all this time.

If Devil fans had done what every other self-respecting hockey fan would have done long ago—which is to completely refuse to buy Devils tickets and completely refuse to watch their broadcasts, the economic reality would have forced the Devils organization to change their ways. Instead, the Devil fans’ willful compliance has allowed these hockey atrocities to continue.

It’s not as though there weren’t some signs of dissention, given that even during their Stanley Cup seasons, the Devils didn’t always sellout their home playoff games. In addition, their Stanley Cup celebrations of mere tens of thousands of fans in a parking lot were a pathetic parody of a more traditional victory bash.

These post-championship events more closely resembled a crowded, poorly decorated Christmas tree lot—which is hardly an appropriate setting for a satanic Stanley Cup shindig. In comparison, the Devils cross-river rivals, the New York Rangers, reveled in their triumphant 1994 ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes in front of millions of exuberant, confetti-throwing fans.

So obviously some Devil fans, though never publicly admitting it, knew that their team (even as Stanley Cup champions) was a joke. There were simply too few of them to display an abundance of displeasure, and the ones that did, just didn’t do so often enough. As to why Devil fans have so little motivation to force their team into playing a palatable style of hockey, and instead choose to keep deferring to a tasteless, zestless version—is anyone’s guess.

Personally, I believe that we must be dealing with a group of people whose favorite food is plain tofu, and whose favorite Marx brother is Zeppo. Perhaps their rather raunchy appearance is some form of holistic compensation for their arid tastes in seemingly every thing else—including hockey. This is just one theory, and perhaps a behavioral psychiatrist could shed more light on the subject.

As you all know, this is not merely my own one-man vendetta against the Devils monotonous methods. They’ve been getting flack from all angles for years. To some degree this must have been festering up for a long time inside of their entire organization, because in an unforgettable, almost surreal broadcast last season, the Devils announcers (Mike Emrick and Chico Resch) spent over one and a half periods discussing, debating and devilishly denying the long-standing charges that the Devils approach to hockey was boring.

Clearly, anyone who goes to that much effort and spends that much time to deny anything is making a feeble attempt to “defend the indefensible”. Remarkably at the end of all of this, Emrick made a pitiful, yet defiant, statement to the effect of: it doesn’t really matter what anyone thinks, because Lamoriello is not going to change anything.

Wow, you really showed us, Mike! If Lucifer Lou won’t change anything, then the fans of the other 29 teams will be happy in the next few years to watch the rest of the league pass by the Devils and their outdated tactics.

And the funny thing is that no matter what Lucifer Lou thinks and says now, the Devils will eventually change because they will be forced to do so. After a few more years of showing that they cannot realistically win a Stanley Cup with their archaic antics, management and/or the fans will finally flex their muscles and send a message to Lucifer Lou (or whoever is the GM at the time) that enough is enough and it’s time to move out of the dark ages.

It has been said many times that “Hell is eternal”, but the Trap and its variations, which were conceived by mortal men, are not.

As a matter of fact, I could easily say that the only legacy Lucifer Lou will leave on the NHL (aside from nearly destroying it) is that he presided over a team who arguably won the three most meaningless Stanley Cups in history—because of a general, league-wide lack of excitement and interest.

However, I won’t say that. I’m withdrawing the word “arguably”, because anyone who plays Devils advocate and attempts to counter my arguments, would be fighting with little to no ammunition.

But perhaps looking back at what I’ve written here, I haven’t been completely fair to the Devils. I’ve only discussed their negative impact on the sport of hockey. What I’ve completely left out (up until now) is the profound effect they have had in the fields of scientific research, national defense and medicine.

Did you know that classical physicists, after watching some Devils games, actually developed several new theories on the principle of inertia? One of them centered around the long term effects on living organisms that have had chronic exposure to inertia (6 to 8 months depending upon how long the Devils season lasted—not included pre-season exposure).

Did you know that scientists have performed sensory deprivation experiments on subjects by immersing them in a small chamber (filled with silent video screens) that aired continuous footage of the 1995, 2000 and 2003 Stanley Cup Finals?

The results here were mixed. Although optical readings of the subjects showed virtually no activity, the overall effects of the monotony on the human brain resulted in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression and antisocial behavior. These are all possible explanations for the Devil fans’ red and black face-painting ritual.

Even the United States and Canadian militaries have gotten into the act by testing exposure to Devils games as a means of enemy torture. After strapping their subjects to a chair and forcing their eyelids open (a la Clockwork Orange), the interrogators forced them to watch DVDs of Devils hockey.

Apparently, the interrogators even showed some mercy by occasionally switching the speed to fast forward. Unfortunately, however, this humanitarian act did not appear to have helped. Although military secrecy prevented any official report of the results, strong rumors exist that the subjects were frequently heard screaming: “No, No, No! Not another 4 shot, scoreless period! I can’t take it anymore! Please let me out! I’ll tell you anything that you want! Just please shut off that hockey game!”

Finally, where would our society be without the innovative pharmaceutical industry? While it can be said that pharmaceutical manufacturers “sell their soles to the Devil” in order for to make windfall profits each year, there is one Canadian pharmaceutical manufacturer who is actually combining “Devils Work” and cutting edge technology to create an innovative new medication.

The technology is known as Digital Elemental Transformation (DET), and actually involves taking the digital reading of a taped event and transforming it into its core elements. These elements are then processed into either liquid or powder form and are ultimately converted into tablets or capsules.

This pharmaceutical company, realizing the sedative effects of Devils hockey, decided to experiment by running Devils games through the DET process in hopes of creating a new form of sleeping pill. The initial formulation utilized an entire Devils game and was used in clinical trials on rink rats (instead of mice) and human volunteers.

The results were both tragic and astounding. 30% of the rats become comatose and never recovered, while their human counterparts were knocked out for an average of 72 to 96 hours—but fortunately did recover without any permanent damage.

Subsequent formulations have utilized only portions of the first period, in order to achieve the desired (human) effect of eight hours of sleep. Although the recent clinical trials using the latest formulation appear to be promising, it will probably be several years before this medication receives approval from the FDA and Health Canada’s TPD.

One irony in this matter is that Devil fans may be among the first consumers to receive prescriptions for the medication once it becomes available. Apparently Devil fans have an unusually high rate on onset insomnia in the months occurring between Fall and Spring. Research has shown that the onset insomnia is due to this group having too many nights, during these months, where they get abnormally excessive amounts of sleep between the hours of 7 PM and 10 PM—thus making it harder to fall asleep at their normal bedtimes.

In conclusion, Devil fans will undoubtedly (despite the overwhelming evidence contained within) still believe that this post was nothing more than “sour grapes” written by a Ranger fan, who is upset about the Devils winning 3 Stanley Cups and sweeping the Rangers in the 2006 playoffs.

This is simply not true. In case Devil fans have forgotten their arithmetic, the Rangers have won 4 Stanley Cups to the Devils 3, and hold an all-time 3 to 1 advantage over the Devils in head to head playoff series.

To further illustrate this point, consider the Rangers other hated, local rival—the New York Islanders. From 1981 to 1984, the Islanders beat the Rangers 4 years in a row in the playoffs (with 1984 ending in an overtime heartbreaker), while winning 4 consecutive Stanley Cups. Yet, as much as I hated (and still hate) the Islanders, I see no need to complain about or ridicule their style of play, either then or now.

The dynasty Islanders won with an exciting brand of hockey—the way hockey should be played. And as a much as I despised watching the Islanders win each year, I have to tip my hat to them for being the best team in the league. That is until they met the high-flying Edmonton Oilers in 1984.

Sorry Devil fans, that “sour grapes” argument just doesn’t “cut the mustard”. It is the final delusion in your desperate denial of what the NHL fans, the NHL media and the NHL franchises have been telling you for years—THEY ARE A BORE! And if you still can’t accept it and want to find something or someone else to pin this on, don’t blame me. THE DEVILS MADE ME DO IT!