COREY SIPKIN/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Welcome back for another edition of Blue Seat Blogs’ Throwback Thursday.  In last week’s edition, we revisited Nikolai Zherdev’s last gasp, game-tying goal against the Penguins way back in 2008.  This week, we jump forward in the time machine nearly four years to reminisce about another memorable matchup with a division rival.

For fans of a certain age, hockey hatred was learned not by watching Rangers-Habs or Rangers-Isles, but Rangers-Devils.  While the rivalry has lost some steam in recent years, Rangers-Devils still evokes a distinct type of of animus among the Garden Faithful.

The Rangers and Devils met several times throughout the playoffs in the 1990’s, with the Rangers getting the best of the Jersey team in 1994 and 1996.  However, as we’re all too painfully aware, after 1994, the Rangers fell into the abyss while the Devils amassed 3 Stanley Cup championships, simultaneously setting the sport of hockey back by 50 years.

The 2012 edition of these teams met in the Eastern Conference Final, which we certainly don’t need to discuss in detail today or ever again.

March 19, 2012 – Rangers vs. Devils | The Line Brawl Game

“Oh, Torts…” is what I thought to myself as Stu Bickel lined up at center opposite Ryan Carter.  Bickel was famous for his big hits and lack of significant ice time, and had certainly never taken a face-off at the professional level.  But this is how John Tortorella chose to match up against Peter DeBoer’s starting lineup.  The Rangers had lost badly to the Devils 13 days prior, and so this happened:

Some observations:

  1. The crowd is going crazy.  I’m not one to defend fighting in hockey (particularly staged, “enforcer” vs. “enforcer” fighting like this), but it certainly put a charge into the early stages of this game.  Side note: this is post-renovation MSG, which proves that if the crowd is engaged, the building can still produce an incredible hockey atmosphere.
  2. Bickel vs. Carter in particular: woah.
  3. Whether or not it had anything to do with it (hint: it didn’t), the Rangers got off to an extremely fast start once the actual hockey game started, with Brandon Dubinsky scoring at the 1:11 mark.  I can still hear the “MAAARRRTTYYY” chants.

All in all, 40 penalty minutes were assessed after the dust settled on the line brawl.  Bickel/Carter, Mike Rupp/Eric Boulton and Brandon Prust/Cam Janssen all got 5 minutes for fighting, and Bryce Salvador got a 10-minute misconduct for trying to peel Bickel off of Carter after their bout ended.

Notable Players

The 2012 Rangers were truly assembled in John Tortorella’s image.  In addition to the grinders who started the game, Brad Richards and Ruslan Fedotenko complemented the familiar forward core of Dubinsky, Ryan Callahan and Derek Stepan.  Tim Erixon and Stu Bickel both dressed ahead of future top-pairing defenseman Anton Stralman in this one (though I can’t verify he wasn’t injured).

The Devils had Ilya Kovalchuk and Zach Parise, who essentially propped up an otherwise below-average roster.  In case you can’t tell, I’m still bitter about losing to this version of the Devils that season.

Trivia Question

John Tortorella once said this player “sucks on the power play”.  He had two assists in this game, one of them shortly after a power play expired.

How’d it all turn out?

The Rangers finished in first place with 109 points and captured the Atlantic Division (not yet the Metropolitan) crown.  And that was it!  They didn’t play the playoffs that year, and by default the Rangers were awarded the Stanley Cup!  What a year it was.

Just kidding.  Hope you enjoyed this one.  See you all next week.

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