The New Jersey Devils were 6-1 up on the New York Rangers with 5:37 left at the Prudential Center on Thursday, outshooting them 29-11, and somebody in the production truck decided the scoreboard had done enough.
Up went a NJ Transit departure board instead. Trains to New York, departure times, platform numbers, stations serviced, the full timetable. A helpful service for anybody in the building who might be thinking about an early exit.
The response was close to universal approval.
“Beautiful. No notes,” one fan wrote.
“Well done. I love a good troll,” said another, with a third adding: “Talk your shit NJ, love it.”
How far apart are the Devils and Rangers?
Rangers supporters who make the trip to a Devils home game genuinely do take that train, in both directions. Newark Penn Station sits directly beside the Prudential Center, with the Hudson River and about eleven miles separating it from Madison Square Garden. That’s what made the gag land. It wasn’t a generic insult, it was their actual route home, posted on a screen the size of a house.
The hockey had been just as unkind. Evan Rodrigues scored with 29.6 seconds left in the first period to start a run of four goals in a little over five minutes, and Luke Hughes recorded the first multi-goal game of his NHL career. Timo Meier, Brett Pesce, Amadeus Lombardi, Dawson Mercer and Dougie Hamilton all finished with two assists.
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Captain Nico Hischier got one of them courtesy of a puck-handling error by Dylan Garand, the 24-year-old now carrying the Rangers’ crease after Igor Shesterkin was ruled out for the season with a knee injury requiring surgery.
The 7-1 result was New Jersey’s second win in a row and only the third defeat in nine games for New York, which gives some idea of how out of character the evening was. The two meet again at Madison Square Garden on December 7.
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