Devils’ Lamoriello receives highest honor

June 24, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

Many times when inductees for a sports Hall of Fame are announced, people debate whether they were worthy of such an honor, or if more deserving candidates got slighted.  However, the NHL’s class of 2009 (to be inducted in November) takes a back seat to nobody.  Forwards Brett Hull, Steve Yzerman, Luc Robitaille and defenseman Brian Leetch were the four players named yesterday to the latest class of the HHoF and all have impeccable credentials. 

Joining them will be Devils GM Lou Lamoriello in the builders category, who was typically humbled by the honor.

“This award is completely unexpected,” Lamoriello said in a Hockey Hall of Fame news release. “Over my career I have been fortunate to have been associated with great players and coaches, and this award recognizes their contributions to my career.”

To call Lou a builder is just the tip of the iceberg of what this man has accomplished in his hockey career.  As a Devils (and NHL) fan for the last fifteen years, all I know is Lou’s extensive tenure with what was once famously referred to as a Mickey Mouse franchise and how he’s been the single biggest reason that the Devils went from that low to one of the preeminent organizations in the sport.

More on that later though.  Two things strike me in reading all the tributes to Lou in the papers today.  One, that he had a heck of a tenure with Providence before most NHL fans had ever heard of him.  He led Providence to twelve straight postseasons in his fifteen years of coach, and helped found the Hockey East conference, becoming its first commissioner.  Certainly he had a pretty distinguished resume before ever setting foot in Devils offices for the 1987-88 season.

The other thing is just the sheer depth of what Lou has done as an NHL executive.  It’s one thing to build a winner, but Lou’s resume is much more extensive than even that.  He certainly hasn’t been afraid to take on the establishment, both in his dealings with the NHL during the whole Jim Schonfeld ‘donut’ fiasco during the ‘87-88 Conference Finals, and more notably successfully arguing for All-Star defenseman Scott Stevens as compensation for losing Brendan Shanahan to the Blues, an unprecedented decision that laid the foundation for what the Devils would soon become.

All that said, Lou’s certainly done a lot to better the league as a whole, the two things which come to mind immediately are when he helped craft the most recent CBA coming off a disasterous ‘04-05 lockout - and more importantly when he helped open the door for Russian (and other Eastern European) players to play in the NHL by importing Slava Fetisov and Sergei Starikov before the ‘89-90 season.

Of course, as much as Lou has done for the game both on the college and pro levels, induction to the HHoF is also about greatness.  Before he came to the Devils, they’d suffered through over a decade of ineptitude in three different locations (Kansas City, Colorado and finally New Jersey).  In his very first season at the helm, the Devils made the playoffs for the first time since moving to New Jersey and went on a Cinderella run all the way to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Bruins, one step away from the Stanley Cup Finals before finally coming up short in Boston Garden.

It would take a few more years of early playoff exits and coaching changes for Lou to put the foundation in place for the perennial 100-point, division-winning teams the Devils have iced more often than not since 1993-94, when a new coach – Jacques Lemaire, and a rookie goaltender named Martin Brodeur helped the Devils to their best season yet.  Again they were stopped one step from the Stanley Cup finals, after losing an epic seven-game series to the Rangers in double OT but unlike the ‘87-88 team, this Devils team was here to stay. 

After a 106-point season in 1994, they struggled through a lockout-shortened 1995 regular season but once the playoffs started this veteran-laden team went on a roll.  In the playoffs, the Devils went 16-4 and won four straight series without home-ice advantage - an unprecedented feat which included a record ten road wins in a single playoff and culminated in a sweep of heavily favored Detroit in the finals, giving the Devils their first Stanley Cup and New Jersey its first sports championship of any kind.  To add to the organization’s new-found luster, the River Rats farm team in Albany also won a championship, the first time in almost twenty years that a single organization won both the Stanley Cup and Calder Cup in the same season.

After some hiccups from 1996-99, the Devils would rebound to win two more Stanley Cups and make one other appearance in the finals during a dominant four-year stretch from ‘99-00 to ‘02-03.  Proving that organizations, not individuals win championships, the Devils won all three Stanley Cups with different coaches.  Larry Robinson was at the helm for the second title in ‘99-00 and Pat Burns led the team to the ‘02-03 championship - in no small part due to the fact that the Devils went 12-1 at home in the playoffs that year, giving the Devils the dual distinction of holding both the record for most road and home wins in a single playoffs.

Even with the retirement of Stevens and the defection of All-Stars like Scott Niedermayer, Brian Rafalski and Scott Gomez, the Devils have kept up their winning ways in the regular season – registering both their tenth 100-point season in the last 13 years in ‘08-09 and eighth division title despite an injury to Brodeur for the better part of the season. 

Lou even returned to his roots for a time after the lockout, coaching the team for the latter part of the ‘05-06 season, and turned what looked like a mess of a season into a remarkable run towards their then-sixth division crown and a first-round sweep of the Rangers that slayed the demon of having never beaten their rivals in the playoffs.  He also returned to the bench one more time in ‘06-07 after dumping Claude Julien and won another first-round series against the Lightning.  Ironically those two series with Lou behind the bench are the only playoff series wins for the Devils since the 2003 Stanley Cup.

Of course none of the Devils’ success past or present would have been possible without then-owner John McMullen’s inspired choice of bringing in Lou to run the franchise – by far the most important decision in the history of the team.  Congratulations to Lou for his induction into the HOF, clearly it’s well deserved!