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The New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers play pretty close to each other — not sure if you knew that; I was a middle school Geography Bee champion so I’m good at map stuff — and things got interesting between former Rangers goalie and current analyst Steve Valiquette and Devils star Jack Hughes.

The two teams met for the first time this season Monday, with the Devils sitting atop the Metropolitan Division and the Broadway Blueshirts trying to navigate a bit of a rough stretch that has seen them drop five of their last six going into Monday night’s contest.

It was all Devils in this one, with David Puddy’s boys breezing to a 5-1 win.

Hughes had two goals and an assist, but, believe it or not, it was a missed breakaway chance in the first period that Valiquette had a problem with during the first intermission report.

“And this is the one I don’t like,” Valiquette said. “I don’t like that because Hughes set out to embarrass Shesterkin there by slowing down and going to one hand, and that should send a shock wave to everybody on the bench.” 

It looked like Hughes tried Peter Forsberg’s old signature move that got him put on a tamp in Sweden, which in the current NHL where dudes try to bust out Michigan moves, isn’t “Instagram hockey” as Valiquette said. 

However, while I don’t think the idea was to embarrass — although it kind of is; getting deked so badly that your jockstrap winds up in the rafters is embarrassing — I think Valiquette is probably right that former Rangers tough guy Colton Orr would have tried to do something about it.

“I know in my day that (tough guy) Colton Orr would have been hanging over the bench, banging his stick, saying, ‘I’m coming after you because you tried to embarrass us.”

That part I believe.

Jack Hughes Responded to Valiquette’s Accusations

After the game, Hughes was asked about the “controversial” moment and I think it’s safe to say that Hughes doesn’t think he did anything wrong either.

Probably because he didn’t.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Hughes said. “Like, what does that even mean?”

I don’t really know either, Jack. I think this was a case of Goaltenders Union members having each others’ backs.

We’ve all seen way cheekier breakaways and other scoring attempts than that. Like I said, that Forsberg move is in most players’ bags of tricks these days.

I’m not sure if we’ll see anything else between Valiquette and Hughes, but it sure is an interesting angle to the Rangers-Devils rivalry that has been rising in temperature over the last couple of seasons.