New Jersey Devils are the San Antonio Spurs of the NHL, thanks to the work of ... - New York Daily News

He is Lou Lamoriello, one of the great front-office figures we have ever had around here, the best of his time when you add it all up and remember where he started, three Stanley Cups with the Jersey Devils, working on four now that his team has beaten the Rangers, and he is standing at the back of the new press box at Madison Square Garden after the first period Wednesday night.

It is still 3-1 for the Devils then, what is still a 2-2 series at that point. But on this night, this point of the game, you can see and feel that the Rangers are coming on, which they sure were.

Somebody comes up to Lamoriello, shakes his hand, says, “I’m a great admirer of your work.”

Lamoriello smiles and says, “You ought to know that we work real hard at that work.”

Like his hockey team. For a long time. Run by a guy who took it over a quarter-century ago without any experience as a player or coach or general manager in the National Hockey League and made something lasting and real and great out of what was a joke at the time, one of the lost-boy franchises, an afterthought even in Jersey.

Made it into the San Antonio Spurs of the NHL.

Lamoriello looks at his phone the other night and sees a message from his friend Bobby Valentine. Before the night is over the Devils are up 3-2 in games and Friday night they beat the Rangers, 3-2, and they go try to win another Stanley Cup for Lamoriello, and the Rangers do what they have done since their greatest hockey spring, in 1994, and that means they go home.

It is not their year, as sure as they were that it was, it is somebody else’s, maybe the Devils, the most successful team in this area that nobody talks about until they play the Rangers. And beat them the way they did this time.

You saw how it ended Friday night if you watched the overtime, saw hockey once more be a sport of effort and luck and ultimately the bounce of the puck. That is how one season ends and another one goes on, all the madness around Henrik Lundqvist, still the best hockey player to never win a major.

Ilya Kovalchuk, a pretty great hockey player, is poking at the puck from Lundqvist’s right and Lundqvist is down. Ryan McDonagh is on one side of Lundqvist and Brad Richards is behind him. But nobody can get control of the puck.

Adam Henrique is there. The puck bounces off a skate and then somehow it goes between Lundqvist’s legs and Richards can’t get the puck out of there and Henrique puts it into the net.

Just like that, at the end of all that, a puck moving all around the crease like that, the Rangers are gone. Minute and three into overtime in Game 6.

So now it is 18 years since the Rangers won it all. Glen Sather has done some of his best work assembling this Rangers team, after all the success he had in Edmonton. But you wonder what happens over the last two decades, certainly the time since the Rangers won their last Stanley Cup, if Lamoriello had been working at the Garden instead of Jersey.

He hasn’t been able to money-whip everybody the way the Yankees do, out-spending the world every year. Lamoriello has done what he has done mostly by being smart and tough and holding the whole thing together by himself sometimes. Working it the way the Devils do. This isn’t about whether you’re a big hockey fan or not. Just about the record of a very big big guy in his sport. Around here, best front office guy of his time.

A little Triple Crown frown, praise for King James & fix Nicks soon . . .

It would be a lot more of a heartwarming story, I’ll Have Another going for the Triple Crown, if the horse’s trainer didn’t seem to have a rap sheet on doping horses as long as the track at Belmont Park, right?

Don’t you sometimes get the idea that as great as Dwyane Wade is, that if you take Shaq and LeBron away from him, he’s Joe Johnson?

This year’s offseason savior for the Knicks â€" because there is always another one coming along â€" will almost certainly be Steve Nash.

The thing about the Yankees that always makes you laugh out loud is this:

As consistent as the way they spend money is that they have no sense of proportion, and even less perspective.

And when they don’t like something you write, the way they didn’t like the Daily News story â€" a really good one â€" about how baseball sources and banking sources have them at least considering putting the team up for sale, they don’t just lose perspective.

They lose their minds.

And scream at people, and threaten people, something their executives often do when they get a case of hurt feelings, and generally act like head-bangers.

Every time they do, the biggest team anywhere comes up looking small again.

Here, by the way, is what passes for investigative reporting by those shooting down our story:

They call Yankee executives and ask what they think.

So it goes, for anybody who dares get on the wrong side of the company in a company town.

There is a better chance of me getting on a space shuttle than there is of me seeing “Dark Shadows.”

Every time you hear people say LeBron James doesn’t have the stomach for the big moments, make sure you refer them to Game 4 against the Pacers the other day, when he looked exactly like what he is, which means one of the great basketball players of all time.

How can someone as gifted as Rajon Rondo, one who routinely makes such creative decisions with a basketball in his hands, sometimes turn into a guy who makes J.R. Smith look like a hoops savant?

Every time I hear that a general manager such as Brian Cashman is part of a team meeting, I think that the guy’s manager better stay on his toes.

Theo Epstein was calling team meetings last year when Terry Francona was his manager, and you see what happened to Francona when he let the Boy Prince down in the end.

Because the Red Sox collapsing that way sure wasn’t going to be Epstein’s fault, are you nuts?

It really is kind of amazing that if the Yankee roster stays intact, they will have 17 players 30 or older by the end of the year.

And seven over the age of 35.

You know what building for the future generally means with the Yankees?

Building for this August and September.

Week in and week out, Eric Stonestreet of “Modern Family” gives the best comedic performance on television.

I don’t care if it’s aliens against battleships in his next movie, if Liam Neeson’s in it, I’m all over it.

NBC’s Pierre McGuire, one of the best sideline guys anywhere, is right:

That sing-song chanting of “Marty” at Martin Brodeur the other night in Game 5 was something as loud as you could ever hear at a college football game.

If I was DeMaurice Smith, and I had handed over the store to Roger Goodell in collective bargaining, I’d try to change the subject with a collusion rap, too.

I have complete confidence in Jerry Reese, always, but losing Hakeem Nicks with a broken foot is a big deal for the defending Super Bowl champs.

Seriously, we’re going to go with a snap-by-snap analysis of Sanchez against Tebow?

Because that will get really tired really fast.

When I saw “Hefner” had pitched for the Mets the other night and then saw how he pitched, I really did think they’d given a start to Hugh.

If I owned the Orlando Magic, I’d ask Donnie Walsh to come be my general manager.

The show on Fox that would do Mitt Romney the most good, if the guy would loosen up a little â€" a tall order, I know â€" is Don Imus’.

If you have never read any of Elmore Leonard’s westerns, do yourself a favor and pick up “Gunsights,” because it is as good as anything he has ever written.
And since he’s the best writer we have, that is saying plenty.

I have the high honor in a couple of weeks of introducing the great Pete Hamill when he is inducted into the New York Writers Hall of Fame.

Congratulations today to my pal, News Sunday Sports editor Eric Barrow, and his wife, who welcomed twin daughters â€" Kay Emily and Brooke Barbara â€" to the world this week.

People don’t care about men’s tennis the way they did when I first started covering the sport, when it was Borg and McEnroe and Connors, and Vitas and Vilas and even Nastase still getting around pretty good.
But with Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, you are talking about one of the great golden ages in the history of the sport.

You think Alex Rodriguez ever finds himself missing Cousin Yuri?

Marian Gaborik, please pick up the white courtesy phone.

The Mike Lupica Show can be heard Monday through Friday at noon on ESPN 98.7 FM.