The

New Jersey Devils The New Jersey Devils are a professional sports, professional ice hockey team based in Newark, New Jersey. The Devils compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Metropolitan Division in the Eastern Conference (NHL), Eastern ...

are a professional

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

team based in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Metropolitan Division of the Eastern Conference of the

National Hockey League The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

(NHL). The Devils arrived in New Jersey in 1982 after transferring from

Denver, Colorado Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

, where they had been known as the

Colorado Rockies The Colorado Rockies are an American professional baseball team based in Denver. The Rockies compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. The team plays its home baseball games at Coors Fie ...

since 1976. Before that, the franchise entered the league as the Kansas City Scouts in 1974. The 2021–22 season is the 39th season of play in New Jersey. It is the 47th year for the Devils franchise, and including the team's time in Kansas City and Denver, the Devils have won over 1,500 regular season games, 17th overall in NHL history. New Jersey played its first 11 seasons in the Patrick Division before moving to the Atlantic Division when the NHL renamed divisions in 1993. The Devils first qualified for the playoffs in 1988, eventually losing in the Conference Finals. The team then made the playoffs several times after that before capturing their first

Stanley Cup The Stanley Cup (french: La Coupe Stanley) is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, an ...

in the lockout-shortened 1994–95 season. The following year, the Devils missed the playoffs, becoming the first team in 26 years to fail to qualify for the playoffs the season after a Stanley Cup victory. Since 1997, however, the Devils qualified for the playoffs each season until 2010–11, a streak surpassed only by the

Detroit Red Wings The Detroit Red Wings (colloquially referred to as the Wings) are a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit. The Red Wings compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division (NHL), Atlantic Division in the East ...

. The Devils won the Stanley Cup in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

and

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

, and advanced to the Finals in

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

, only to lose to the

Colorado Avalanche The Colorado Avalanche (colloquially known as the Avs) are a professional ice hockey team based in Denver. They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The Avalanche play thei ...

in seven games. Overall, the Devils made 22 appearances in the Stanley Cup playoffs, in the 24 seasons between 1987–88 and 2011–12, including 13 consecutive seasons between 1996–97 and 2009–10. After missing the playoffs for the first time in 14 years in 2010–11, the Devils rebounded the following year, making the playoffs again and losing in the

Stanley Cup Finals The Stanley Cup Finals in ice hockey (also known as the Stanley Cup Final among various media, french: Finale de la Coupe Stanley) is the National Hockey League's (NHL) championship series to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, North America ...

to the Los Angeles Kings. Following this run the Devils had trouble finding success as they missed the playoffs nine times in the following ten seasons.

Table key

Year by year

Notes

* In 1992, the NHL expanded the season to 84 games, and each team played two games at a neutral site. After the 1995 lockout, the neutral site games were eliminated, and the season was reduced to 82 games. * The NHL realigned into Eastern and Western Conferences prior to the 1993–94 season. New Jersey was placed in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. * Both seasons were shortened to 48 games because of lockouts - the

1994–95 NHL lockout The 1994–95 NHL lockout was a lockout that came after a year of National Hockey League (NHL) hockey that was played without a collective bargaining agreement. The lockout was a subject of dispute as the players sought collective bargaining and ...

, finished on January 11, 1995, and the

2012–13 NHL lockout The 2012–13 NHL lockout was a labor dispute between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) that began at 11:59 pm EDT on September 15, 2012. A tentative deal on a new collective barga ...

, finished on January 6, 2013. * Beginning with the 1999–2000 season, teams received one point for losing a regular season game in overtime. * The season was canceled because of the

2004–05 NHL lockout The 2004–05 NHL lockout was a labor lockout that resulted in the cancellation of the National Hockey League (NHL) season, which would have been its 88th season of play. The main dispute was the league's desire to implement a salary cap to ...

. * Beginning with the 2005–06 season, the NHL instituted a penalty shootout for regular season games that remained tied after a five-minute overtime period, which prevented ties. * The 2019–20 regular season officially ended in May due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

, with the remaining regular season games from March and April being cancelled. * Due to the

, the

2020–21 NHL season The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

was shortened to 56 games.

References

;General * * ;Specific {{featured list seasons National Hockey League team seasons