“NASHVILLE CAN WAIT” and “THE COMEBACK BEGINS”
#832/#815
832. NEW JERSEY DEVILS VS PITTSBURGH PENGUINS
EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS
GAME FOUR
MAY 26, 1995
BRENDAN BYRNE ARENA
QUALITY OF PLAY—7.62
DRAMA—8.03
STAR POWER—6.32
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—8.05
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.55
LOCAL IMPACT—6.88
TOTAL: 43.45
“NASHVILLE CAN WAIT”
*NOTE*—Your humble Listkeeper is, it turns out, fallible after all. Seems I missed a game along the way about 20 slots ago, and didn’t seem to notice. Ah well. So let’s get back on schedule by printing it here, along with the next one in regular order.
Being a fan of the New Jersey Devils circa 1995 wasn’t easy. After coming in from Colorado to become the metro area’s third team in 1982, the Devils were ordained to always take a back seat to the Rangers and Islanders. The cheap and poor teams of those early years were derided as “Mickey Mouse” by none other than the Great One, Wayne Gretzky. And the franchise’s best team so far, the 1994 version, had just been eliminated in a bitter, incredibly tense and memorable seven game series by their arch-rivals, the Rangers. And just when it seemed the team was poised to take the next step, the owners locked out the players at the beginning of the 1994-95 season, wiping three months off the schedule.
Worst of all, rumors abounded that the short season would be the last one in Sopranos-land—owner John McMullen was up in arms that he couldn’t drain every cent from his agreement with Byrne Arena, and thus made noise about moving to Nashville, where the rapacious McMullen would have a sweetheart deal and collect a $20 million relo bonus.
Despite the background noise, the Devils made the postseason when the 1995 season at last got underway, but the long layoff and truncated schedule worked against the team, who finished with the fifth-best record in the East, just barely over .500. They had some good players, including John MacLean, America’s own Neal Broten (newly acquired in February), Claude Lemieux, and Stephane Richer, who led the team in points. But the talisman was, as ever, goalie Martin Brodeur, even though he was just in the second season of his incredible career.
The Devils swamped the Bruins in the first round, while Pittsburgh survived a seven-game battle with Washington. That set up a meeting in the conference semis between the third-seeded Pens, a dangerous club even without Mario Lemieux, who missed the season due to fatigue from treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and fifth-seeded Devils. After a split at the confluence of the Monongahela, the Allegheny, and the Ohio rivers, the teams came east to play along the Hudson. Jerz took command with a 5-1 blowout in Game Three, and were in pole position when the teams reconvened for Game Four, held on Friday night, May 26, 1995.
Across the water in Manhattan, the hated Rangers, ruiners of the previous season, were in the process of being swept away by Philadelphia, meaning a victory to put a hammerlock on the series would feel doubly sweet for the put-upon Devils fans. 19,040 fans, choosing love over anger at the team and its potential move, sold out Brendan Byrne Arena to witness the event, and were treated to their team dominating play. They outshot Pittsburgh 23-13 and were skating circles around the flightless birds. But Penguins goalie Ken Wreggett was superb, denying the Devils at every turn. Brodeur had an easier time with the Pens attack, and after two periods the game was scoreless.
“It has been a mean, vicious, ornery type of game,” said broadcaster Mike Emrick on the SportsChannel play by play, and the chippiness at last gave way to scoring in the third period. Before a minute had gone by, MacLean uncorked a booming slap shot that Wregget couldn’t handle. It dropped right to Broten, who pushed the rubber over the line for the game’s first tally. Ron Francis tied it for Pittsburgh midway through the period, and the teams spent the rest of regulation whacking each other with their sticks. The game went to overtime, and the capacity crowd, who had been buoyant for much of the night, now grew tense.
That would continue through an overtime stanza that took nearly the entire 20 minutes. Both goalies made magic in the overtime, with Wregget stopping a pair of Bobby Holik drives and Brodeur somehow keeping a Jaromir Jagr smash from 20 feet out of the net. With about 90 seconds left in the extra stanza, MacLean took off on an astounding end-to-end rush, especially given how much ice time the veteran winger had accumulated. He blew all the way around the Pens goal, and slipped a sweet dish to Broten, who had planted himself alone at the right post. The newest Devil ingratiated himself to the fans by slotting home the winner, his second of the game, and the Devils won 2-1. Once again, MacLean and Broten had provided the oomph the Satans required.
The Grand Ole Opry and Broadway (southern version) could wait—the Devils weren’t going to Nashville, or anywhere else, just yet.
AFTERMATH:
The Devils finished off the Pens in the next game, winning in five, then waxed the Flyers in six to make it to the Cup finals. There they made short work of the Red Wings, sweeping the Detroiters. For that shining moment, Hockeytown USA was East Rutherford, New Jersey.
At the Cup celebration held in the Meadowlands parking lot (one does not parade down the Garden State Parkway), the buzzkill announcement was made that the team indeed had broken its lease and might just move to Tennessee. Fortunately, all concerned decided to mitigate their bottomless greed for the moment, and the Devils remained in Jersey. Two more Stanley Cups followed. The Rangers and Islanders have won zero titles since the Devils took over hockey in the area.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Most of the TV and radio crews were in Manhattan, which was understandable—they had an obituary to do. But they’ll be here next week when the Devils play again…and the building will be filled, not with the casual fans New Yorkers think New Jersey has, but with true believers.”
—Mike Celizic, Bergen Record
FURTHER READING:
“McMullen Moves On And Devils Stay Put” by Richard Sandomir, The New York Times
VIDEO:
And now, back to our regularly scheduled countdown…
815. NEW YORK KNICKS VS BOSTON CELTICS
EASTERN CONFERENCE QUARTERFINALS
GAME THREE
MAY 2, 1990
MADISON SQUARE GARDEN
QUALITY OF PLAY—6.84
DRAMA—7.15
STAR POWER—7.56
CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.45
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—6.73
LOCAL IMPACT—7.89
TOTAL: 43.62
“THE COMEBACK BEGINS”
In the first round of the 1988 NBA playoffs, the Boston Celtics came to Madison Square Garden up 2-0 after easily handling the Knicks in Baaaahston. The Knicks showed some spunk, winning Game Three and taking Game Four to the wire, but the classy Celts used their experience and superior talent to pull it out. Two years later, the situation repeated itself. Gang Green traveled south on the Post Road to visit Madison Square Garden up 2-0 in a best of five series.
These 1990 Knicks were better, though not nearly as beloved in the City. With Rick Pitino and his high-energy teams a relic of the near-past, new coach Stu Jackson installed a sturdy, stodgy half-court offense that was built around Patrick Ewing—certainly defensible, as proven when Ewing dropped an astounding 51 point, 15 rebound game on the Celtics a few weeks earlier (see #981). But it was not as alluring to the cognoscenti, and the electricity the plucky, overachieving Pitino teams brought to MSG was sapped.
Still, the Knicks had a better team than in 1988, and more importantly, the great Celtic frontcourt was wheezing toward the finish line. Reggie Lewis had instilled some youthful energy and scoring punch to the Green, but in general this group would still go as far as the gimpy trio of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish would take them.
Knicks guard Mark Jackson summed it up succinctly. “They’re getting older and we’re knocking on the door.”
But it didn’t appear that way during the first two games of the opening playoff round, held in Boston thanks to the Celtics rallying late past New York to grab the fourth-seed and home-court advantage for the best of five series. The Celts crushed the ‘Bockers, thanks to a Bird triple-double in the opener and an incredible 157-point outburst in Game Two. The Knicks may have been knocking on the door, but Bird and Co. were difficult bouncers to elude.
With no margin for error, New York returned to the World’s Most Famous Arena for Game Three, held Wednesday night, May 2, 1990. “We’ve been sitting around and listening to all the things you guys have been saying,” Ewing told a group of reporters who had already begun their “season’s over” stories. “We want to prove we have that pride.”
Ewing himself had been bottled up in Boston, but immediately shot early and often in Game Three. He wasn’t particularly accurate, but that was offset by two factors. Overall the Celtics were uncharacteristically sloppy. They had 21 turnovers, and the scrappy home team pulled down 21 offensive rebounds. In a word, Blackjack.
“We simply did not box out,” admitted the Chief, Parish, after the game. “We have to do a much better job than that,” added McHale. All the second and third chances allowed the Knicks to shoot just 40% yet lead most of the game, albeit narrowly.
It was tight all the way. Ewing had 33 points and 19 rebounds to back up his pride talk. Bird countered with 31 and 8 assists. With the Knicks up 100-99 late in the contest, Kenny Walker drilled a baseline jumper to up the lead to three with 7.6 seconds left. The partisan crowd chanted for “Deee-fense!” but Bird somehow found himself wide open for a potential tying three at the horn. “Before I even shot it, I thought it was going to be all net,” Bird admitted. The Garden tensed for the inevitable. But miraculously, the ball clanged badly off the back iron, and the Knicks held on for the 102-99 victory to stave off elimination.
“You couldn’t ask for a better three-point opportunity,” moaned Celts coach Jimmie Rodgers. The Knicks had won with a lucky escape and proof that Larry’s Legend was indeed failing. Perhaps it was a new era after all?
AFTERMATH:
New York kept it going in Game Four, a 27-point blowout that suddenly had all of Beantown mumbling to itself. These weren’t the usual pushover Knicks! Still, they had the aura of the Boston Garden, where the Celts had beaten the Knicks an unthinkable 26 straight times, as a firewall for Game Five. Alas for the Massholes, Ewing scored 31, including a late, highly cathartic turnaround three in front of the Knicks bench, to key a 121-114 upset and complete the shocking comeback. To say it was a surprise development is an understatement—to those of us who had suffered through the Green Machine dominating the 80s it was almost impossible to believe. The worm had turned and the 90s era of Knicks glory and Celtics irrelevancy was upon us.
WHAT THEY SAID:
“Once it left my hands, I knew it was a brick.”
—Larry Bird, on his three-point miss at game’s end.
FURTHER READING:
Drive: The Story of My Life by Larry Bird with Bob Ryan
VIDEO: