The phone rang. My editor was not much for small talk. \u201cYou\u2019ve been looking forward to covering the Knicks in the playoffs, right?\u201d he asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAbsoutely,\u201d I said. I was 33, just cutting my teeth as a full-time sports columnist at the Newark Star-Ledger. Basketball was my game, my bag. Damn right I was looking forward to covering the Knicks in the 2000 playoffs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re on the Devils,\u201d he told me. I started to protest. He cut me off. \u201cSimple geography,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re a Jersey paper. You\u2019re a Jersey columnist. They\u2019re Jersey\u2019s team.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And as so often happens, out of the dust of disappointment rose one of my favorite experiences covering a team. Sixty-one days, 59 columns on the Devils, all the way to the Stanley Cup in Dallas. The players were terrific. The access was glorious. The company was superb \u2014 it was during those playoffs I first became friends with the great Larry Brooks<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The phone rang. My editor was not much for small talk. \u201cYou\u2019ve been looking forward to covering the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5101],"tags":[15831,599,93,5137,5,151,4,43531,3358,5138,43,350,336],"class_list":["post-587425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-red-wings","tag-claude-lemieux","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-red-wings","tag-detroitredwings","tag-hockey","tag-new-jersey-devils","tag-nhl","tag-open-mike","tag-red-wings","tag-redwings","tag-sports","tag-sports-columnists","tag-sports-plus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116665838715986069","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}