Do you consider Carolina a hated rival?

[The Devil In I]

Carolina is the team/franchise I actually hate due to history. But I don't really consider it a rivalry.

I f***ing hate the Rangers because of the proximity and their fans, that I consider a rivalry. But I don't actually hate the team, how can I hate the team if over my lifetime we're overwhelmingly the ones coming out on top? I do hate Carolina the team.

If that makes sense....

 

[Bleedred]

There was a while there where I started to hate the Islanders more than the Rangers. I actually think I hated the Flyers more than the Rangers and I've felt that way basically forever. Probably because they're usually filled with more scummier players and their history of goonery. The Flyers have always been filled with more unlikeable players and other scumbags than the Rangers.

As a person and a fan, I basically do what I want and I can't stand the Islanders, and I love going against the norms and rebelling and hating the Islanders as much or more than the Rangers because it pisses Devils fans off, but it pisses me off when I see Devils fans rooting for the Islanders in the playoffs and in some extreme cases when they've thought we as Devils fans need to respect the Islanders.

I, as a Devils fan think the Islanders can f*** right off and so can anyone who expects me to root for them or respect them or not hate them.

I'm almost at the ''Okay, I think I've seen enough. I'm having some sympathy'' stage for the Islanders, seeing what Lou is doing (FUBARING) over there, but I'll start showing more sympathy when they start falling out of the playoffs annually. Then I think I will have seen enough.

It sucks they have such a good goalie, but it may also be enough to keep them from bottoming out too badly when they do get bad enough that they're a perennial playoff missing team.

I can respect a Devils fan that roots for the Islanders because they grew up liking the Islanders or were fans of the team when there was no New Jersey NHL team.

 

[My3Sons]

I'm so glad the inferior Sutter brother (and by inferior, I mean out of all his brothers that coached, not just the most successful one in Darryl) f***ed off to Calgary and never got another head coaching gig after that.

I'm half surprised he never got another head coaching gig, especially since BAD coaches are hired every offseason to head coach in the NHL, but I wonder if him bailing on the Devils to go work for Calgary because he ''Wanted to go home'' rubbed people the wrong way. It pissed JVB off, who was vocal about it, but it made me happy. He was worthless. If we didn't have the worst head coach in the history of hockey at one point (who he gave his vote of confidence to on the way out to Calgary) in our franchise history, Sutter may have been the worst head coach we ever had.

That said, we did hire one pretty big name (albeit one who had a big name because of an international tournament with college aged kids) that we had for a year before Lou said ''Yeah, that's enough of that'' after one year (a playoff year, no less) to hire Lemaire. He was pretty awful and I think that was the last time he worked in the NHL, other than an interim stint with the Pens about 7 or 8 years later.

I remember when there were rumors that Brent would be the successor to Lou as GM. Remember, his brother Darryl had transitioned to being a GM and was the Calgary GM at the time, although that didn't last very long. It's funny, the rumor of Brent leaving at the end of the 08-09 season came out around February or so of that year and when asked, he said something like ''I evaluate my situation every season at the end of the year and that's what I'll be doing again at the end of this year'' which didn't exactly say he wasn't going to do what the rumor suggested he was going to do. If that wasn't a sign right there that the rumors were true.

With what we know now, not sure Brent would have ever become the GM here, unless he was somehow still the head coach here in 2015 and Harris and Blitzer purged Lou and promoted him. With what we know now and 14 years after Sutter left, Lou is almost 81 years old and still an active GM in the NHL. If Lou was able to go out on his own terms would he have retired from being a GM by now? Perhaps, but he surely wasn't okay with doing that as of 2015.

With the approach of the new season and the slight remaking of the roster, will you consider amending your signature and that acronym below your name?

 

[Hockey Sports Fan]

Yes, they were trash, but they were ours. It took me a long time to get over the Whalers leaving.

Add in the 2009 collapse and this past season, and they're definitely in the top 3 most disliked teams for me.

it probably has to do with me living in a glorified New York suburb for most of my life. Everyone i knew growing up was a Rangers fan, i wasn’t a serious hockey fan until i was much older, and i didn’t even know the Whalers existed until a year before they left.

 

[njdevils1982]

big time hate.... that canes/panthers series was brutal for me

a no win situation...at least vegas did work (best case scenario)

 

[Bleedred]

With the approach of the new season and the slight remaking of the roster, will you consider amending your signature and that acronym below your name?

I just haven't felt like changing it yet. Too lazy. Haven't changed my playoff avatar either. Will be changing both before the season starts.

Although, I could change ''FIRE BLACKWOOD!'' to ''PLAY BLACKWOOD EVERY GAME!''. as I'm very pro-Blackwood when it comes to the Sharks. He's needed to help keep a strong tank rolling.

 

[ZachaFlockaFlame]

They're right behind the Flyers/Rags for me. 2009 still burns me and they're going to be a thorn in our side for the next decade now.

 

[Guttersniped]

I gotta say yes. Their a team that stands in our way. Two elite teams with playoff history in the same division which means likely more playoff showdowns. Erik Haula hates the Canes!

They were certainly an Eastern Conference rival in the past, the 2009 playoff loss was pretty brutal because the team was still vaguely good then.

That said, they were never a true Divisional Rival to me.

Only actually 100% legitimate Divisional opponents aka the Atlantic Division:
New York Rangers
New York Islanders
Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins

Will also accept for Old Skool Kool Patrick Division, but my brain was personally programmed more by the Atlantic Division years:
Washington Capitals

(Yes the Panthers and Lightning were in the Atlantic division for a couple of years but we just pretend that didn’t happen.)

We were fighting for the Division when it was just four other teams, those games mattered, and in some years we played those teams a ridiculous number of times.

Playing a team 8 times in a season and then playing them in the playoffs makes an impression. (This is also why the Islanders were our kooky little buddies to me, they mostly sucked when we were good and vice versa.)

Anyway, now that we’re good, I now might eventually start accepting the concept of the Metro Division. I’ve just always rejected it.

 

[My3Sons]

I just haven't felt like changing it yet. Too lazy. Haven't changed my playoff avatar either. Will be changing both before the season starts.

Although, I could change ''FIRE BLACKWOOD!'' to ''PLAY BLACKWOOD EVERY GAME!''. as I'm very pro-Blackwood when it comes to the Sharks. He's needed to help keep a strong tank rolling.

It breaks my heart that I can’t look forward to your third person rants to quote out of context this season.

 

[Hisch13r]

Yes. Those f***ers always beat us. Easily #2 for me. I’m indifferent to the Flyers now. I even liked them in the Giroux days. Have liked the Pens and Caps. Never cared either way about the Isles besides their fanbase being the f***ing worst.

 

[njdevils1982]

don waddell is a goof... what the hell did he ever do when he was running the thrashers?

...f*** all is the only answer

 

[Mgd31]

Right below NYR for me, yes.

 

[Clam Jensen]

They’re just so annoying. The whole clapping and storm surge thing was mega cringe, not to mention our unfortunate history of playoff losses to them.

 

[Wierzbowski426]

Not personal for me like with the Flyers and Rangers because I dont think ive ever actually encountered a hurricanes fan in real life, but considering our results against them, yes I hate them.

 

[Stephen Gionta]

Not a rival.

But would say that they are the #1 team that has given the Devils fits the past 20 years.

 

[MadDevil]

Right now, I'd say I find them more of an annoyance than a hated rival, but that will probably change in the next few years as we're battling them for the division, and most likely meeting them in the playoffs again given the current format.

 

[Stephen Gionta]

Carolina is the team/franchise I actually hate due to history. But I don't really consider it a rivalry.

I f***ing hate the Rangers because of the proximity and their fans, that I consider a rivalry. But I don't actually hate the team, how can I hate the team if over my lifetime we're overwhelmingly the ones coming out on top? I do hate Carolina the team.

If that makes sense....

Feel similar - but the Ranger fan base makes me hate their team. I actually like Carolina - the state, the people there, their fans, etc. - but that team has just always had our number and I hate it.

 

[Hockey Sports Fan]

I’m surprised to see so many people listing them ahead of Flyers, Pens, etc. I feel like it’s gonna be awhile before i’m actively rooting for and enjoying their failure like i do the Flyers.

Pittsburgh has a really bad habit of adding players i really like and then winning the cup with them. Once they stop that, it’s over for those fools. I’m not ready to try and hate Karlsson this year.

 

[Call Me Al]

I think I have to at this point, yeah. It's been 20 years since the Devils lost a playoff series to the Flyers and 15 since they lost one to the Rangers. In that span they've lost 3 times to Carolina, plus another additional time.

Plus while I might be wrong about this, it feels like the Hurricanes and Devils will be battling it out for Metropolitan supremacy for the next 5 years.

i don’t disagree with the sentiment but we lost to the flyers, really embarrassingly, in 2010

 

[Triumph]

i don’t disagree with the sentiment but we lost to the flyers, really embarrassingly, in 2010

Oh shit. I suppressed that one.

 

[Bleedred]

I remember calling Flyers in 5 long before that series. I got that down to the exact game.

I may have even said ''Devils out in 5, no matter who we play'' long before we even found out who we were playing. I don't remember.

You could just feel that team was unravelling after the new year. We were maybe winning at a clip that was greater than we were up through January of that year, but you could really see that coming and it carried over into the next season, only it had..... Ya know. metastasized. We were a 500-ish team in the second half of that season, I know, I know, market corrections and all, as we still finished with over 100 points and that was good enough to win the division that year, but that was easy to see coming.

The 2010 Brodeur of the 09-10 season was certainly not the 2009 Brodeur of the 09-10 season. All signs point to that really being the point he started to significantly decline and January of 2010 was the beginning of the end. We also played him 77 games at age 37 that year and I remember one stretch where he was getting yanked left and right, then we'd keep putting him right back in the night or game after. He was pretty bad in that playoff series, even though I remember them really torching us while they were on the power play. That may have been up there with the worst playoff series Brodeur had in his career, other than the 2001 SCF. The 2008 Rangers series came close. But he was just about to turn 38 years old at that time and while we weren't really sure at the time because the sample size was still very small, it's clear he was significantly in decline by that point.

 

[MB3]

After they beat us in 02, 06, and 09 I f***ing hated them. I was in the building in 02 and 09 (and was at all of the playoff games in 06). I've never felt angrier than I did in 2009.

Then we got shitty, they got shitty, they got better, we stayed shitty, I don't really care about them.

They didn't have anyone last year I actively disliked. They were just more prepared, they had tons of playoff experience, and they beat us. It happens.

If we lose to them again this year I'm sure I'll start to hate them again.

 

[Louskoolaid89]

don waddell is a goof... what the hell did he ever do when he was running the thrashers?

...f*** all is the only answer

Gave Lou Kovalchuk for a bag of used jockstraps.

 

[Bleedred]

Waddell feels more like a figurehead in Carolina. And I know people will say ''EVERY GM IS A FIGUREHEAD!'' but it feels a little more like that with Waddell, maybe more than most GM's.

I do think Ron Francis deserves some credit. They turned the corner the first year after he was gone. They probably should have a year or two earlier, but the goalie situation was really horrible there, with Scott Darling and a very washed up Cam Ward, who it felt like they were never going to let leave.

I think Canes fans had mixed reactions of the Francis firing. I know some have pointed to the contract he gave Darling as being a big reason he got canned. Others have said that Dundon wanted all the control and just wanted a puppet GM.

Enter: Don Waddell.

 

[TheUnseenHand]

I really don't care about them much. They are such a good team, but somehow still irrelevant. Just such a meh franchise I just can't get all that worked up about, even with their wins over us in the past.

I hate the rags and the pens. I dislike a lot of other teams to varying degrees. Carolina is somewhere in the middle of the list of dislike.