The Blueshirts Tie The Devils In The 'Disappointment Department"

When the National Hockey League season started in October, there was unmitigated joy on both sides of Henry Hudson's River.

I recall one otherwise sober individual actually telling me that New Jersey's Devils would win the Stanley Cup for the first time in 23 years.

Meanwhile, Rangers fans were celebrating because The Hockey News Yearbook promised a playoff berth for the New York Retools. (And what a novelty that would have been.)

"Nobody's perfect," chuckles The Old Scout, "but the two teams about to miss the postseason by so much is hard to believe."

Here are the things that went wrong:

1. Neither the Devils nor Rangers, who meet tonight at The Garden, have Matthew Schaefer in their lineup.

2. The Devils were self-torpedoed when ace – later to be known as Gold Medalist – Jack Hughes forgot to be super-careful at a team party. Jumpin' Jack's absence was devastating; and that's an understatement.

3. Since there was no one else on the Devs roster named Jack Hughes, the skating Satans were, in a word, bedeviled! (Poof! Just like that, out of the playoffs.

4. The Rangers, on the other (non-injured) hand, forgot to remove the 2024-25 calendar from the clubhouse wall, and simply stunk out the season with a ditto like the previous year.