By James Cortiglia
Flashback
to December 25, 1776. George “The mo-fo”
Washington led a platoon of troops in the dark of night across the Delaware
River to beat up on some Red Coats in Trenton before building Trenton State
College, which is now known as The College of New Jersey. MERRY CHRISTMAS YA WANK-AHS! Now let me bring your attention to another
river invasion near and dear to my heart that occurred between another set of Blue sweaters and Red
sweaters. Fast forward to 1994, the New
York Rangers defeated their cross-Hudson rivals, the New Jersey Devils, in the
Eastern Conference Championship on the “We Will Win” promise of Mark Messier,
who went on to score a hat trick that would shift the momentum of the series
and propel the Rangers to a Stanley Cup victory. Then, one year later in 1995, the Devils
would sweep the Detroit Red Wings to bring the cup back home across the
Hudson. Now that I’ve set the table for
you, LET US FLIP THAT SHIT OVER!
So
here we are, in the year 2012. The No. 1
seeded New York Rangers, who will forever be remembered by me as “The Broadway
Facebooks” (one game could not seriously go by without dozens of status updates
from all of the bandwagon “fans”), matched up against their old rivals in the red
sweaters once again. DISCLAIMER! Before I delve any deeper into this, I must
confess; I am a huge Devils fan. In
fact, when it comes to the Rangers, I hate everything about them. I hate their dingbat players, I hate
Lundqvist (but God damn it he is good), I hate their douchebag coach, I hate
shitty old MSG, I hate the incompetent fans, I hate Mark Messier for beating us
in 1994 (I was 2 years old, but you know what…fuck him anyway), and I
especially hate the color BLUE! Wayne
Gretzky even sold out and played for the Rangers! Fonk that noise! But I digress… let us discuss the series.
So
here we are, the cross-river rivals were poised for an age-old showdown. The Satan worshippers vs. everyone’s least
favorite team (after the Penguins, of course).
It was a true battle of Evil vs. Evil.
How could it get any better? In
game 1 Lundqvist shined brighter than anyone else, posting a shutout and making
many believe that the series was already over.
However, the Devils came back strong with some nice deflection goals in
game 2 to split the series at 1-1. In
game 3, Lundqvist rose to the occasion again and posted ANOTHER shutout with a
3-0 victory on the road. The Devils once
again came back very strong at the Rock (presumably named after the crack rocks
that are sold in the upper deck bathrooms), and won 4-1 in a game where tempers
flared between coaches Peter DeBoer (who looks strikingly similar to a Mr. Paul
Molicki [father of Wookiee Wednesday contributor Chris Molicki? You be the
judge]) and John Tortorella who had some words for each other across the
benches. I assume they were planning a
dinner date at the local Olive Garden afterwards. Well anyway, with the series tied 2-2 the Devils
marched into MSG and walked out with a 5-3 victory, in a wild game where they
opened up the scoring with 3 unanswered goals, only for the Rangers to come
back 3-3 by the third period. It wasn’t
until late in the 3rd when Ryan “I MUSTACHE YOU A QUESTION” Carter
buried a game winning goal on a no look pass from Stephen Gionta, the younger
brother of ex-Devils player Brian Gionta.
With all the momentum and the ability to close the series at home, the
Devils did not disappoint their home crowd (which in reality was about 50% Rangers
fan) and won 3-2 in overtime. This is
the first time that the Devils have ever beaten the New York Rangers to advance
to the Stanley Cup, and they will be facing the overachieving 8th
seeded Los Angeles Kings. BYAHHHH!!!!
To
conclude, I’d like to thank the 6 hockey fans who bothered to read this as well
as the many others who may have accidentally clicked on this hoping to read up
on sports that Americans actually watch.
If this article can make one non-hockey fan to tune into a Devils-Kings
game in the upcoming week, I will have fulfilled the will of Lord Stanley
himself. Thank you and goodnight Canada!
No comments:
Post a Comment