But do people outside of Bergen and Essex County, NJ know that?
By Evan Weiner
If a tree in a New Jersey forest fails and the legacy New York City sports media isn’t there to cover it, does it make any noise? The legacy sports media has never been that kind to the New Jersey Devils hockey team since the franchise move to New Jersey in 1982. The Devils hockey team is playing well and could be the beet team in the New York City sporting market. The Devils lost to the New York Islanders 3-2 in overtime and that was the first loss on home ice in 2025-26. New Jersey has some pretty good players led by Jack Hughes, Jesper Bratt and Nico Hischier but the team is ignored by the legacy sports media. The team used to play in the Meadowlands and shared the sports complex with the National Basketball Association’s Nets and the National Football League’s Giants and Jets. While the Nets franchise was in New Jersey, the New York City sports media ignored the team and that continues until this day with the team in Brooklyn. But sports talk radio and New York sports legacy media will cover every aspect of the Florham Park, New Jersey Jets and the East Rutherford, New Jersey Giants.
New Jersey can score and has a decent defense. Goaltending might be a problem but there is plenty of time before the playoffs to rectify that. But the team will forever play a third fiddle in the New York Rangers and the New York Islanders in hockey coverage. It probably didn’t help that during the New Jersey Devils’ glory days of the 1990s when the team won Stanley Cups that the team president and general manager Lou Lamariello didn’t bother to promote players like Martin Brodeur, Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer. The team owner John McMullen was always complaining about the Meadowlands arena dn threatened to move his business to Nashville or to Hoboken. The team ended up in Newark after the New Jersey Nets ownership could not get a building constructed in Newark. But Tom Fitzgerald has built a pretty good team in Newark even if the New York sports legacy media isn’t there to chronicle it. New Jersey and it is not close right now, has the best fall-winter-spring team in the New York market.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
Luke Hughes
