daneyko lemaire

Jacques Lemaire gathered his team in the meeting room days ahead of Game 1 of the 1995 Stanley Cup Final.

On the board behind him were two columns. One listed the names of the players on his Devils roster. The other column listed the names of the players on the Detroit Red Wings roster.

New Jersey was getting set to face the vaunted Red Wings for hockey’s holiest chalice. Everyone in the hockey world believed the Red Wings would not only win the Stanley Cup but win it handily.

“Nobody gave us a chance,” recalled Devils defenseman Ken Daneyko. “The papers said we had no chance, the radios, the talk shows of the hockey world. The media didn’t really give us a chance.”

Lemaire, the Devils head coach, didn’t want those intrusive thoughts to seep into the psyches of his players. So, he devised a plan.

Devils legend Ken Daneyko shares a personal story of Jacques Lemaire's impact ahead of '95 Cup

With the team sitting in front of him, he pointed to the two columns behind him. Lemaire would call out the name of one of the Red Wings’ players. He then turned to his group and called out one of his own players.

“Dano! Can you outplay that guy?” And Daneyko responded with a yes.

Lemaire pointed to the board and called out the name of another Red Wings player.

“Stéphane Richer! Can you outplay that guy?” Richer responded with a yes.

Lemaire repeated that. Calling out different players from the Red Wings roster and asking around the room if his own Devils’ players could outplay the individual.

“Niedermayer! Can you outplay that guy?”

“Randy McKay! Can you outplay that guy?”

“What he was doing from my perspective,” Daneyko said, “he was making sure we weren’t overwhelmed. We weren’t reading the press clippings and thinking that we’ve got no shot to beat Detroit because they were the heavy, heavy favorites.”

And for good reason. The Red Wings won the Presidents’ Trophy that season for having the best regular-season record. In the playoffs, they lost only two games on their coast to the Stanley Cup Final. The current seemed to be behind the Red Wings.

“John MacLean! Can you outplay that guy?”

“Scott Stevens! Can you outplay that guy?”

And the Red Wings roster was stacked with future Hall of Fame players with names like Sergei Fedorov, Paul Coffey, Vyacheslav Kozlov, Nicklas Lidstrom and Steve Yzerman.

“Claude Lemieux! Can you outplay that guy?”

“Neal Broten! Can you outplay that guy?”

Lemaire went around the room, and the mood began to shift.

“I remember of couple of us whispering and going, ‘man, we might be better,’” Daneyko smiled remembering. “And that’s what Jaques wanted. He wanted to make sure that we weren’t taking a back seat to anybody.”

The Devils started to think that not only could they outplay those individuals, but as a collective, they were the better team.

“(Lemaire) wanted to make sure every guy in that room understood that we’re as good as them as a team,” Daneyko said. “They might have an individual or two that’s better in certain areas. But as a group, as a team, we were there for a reason. That we could play with them and beat them.

“And the rest is history.”

The Devils turned the script on the entire hockey world and defeated the mighty Detroit Red Wings by sweeping them in four games to capture the franchise’s first Stanley Cup title.

It was a feat that no one thought possible. No one, except every player in the Devils' locker room that is. Thanks in part to a psychological ploy by their head coach.

“That was genius. There’s always a method to the madness for certain coaches,” Daneyko said. “I remember a couple guys after that meeting saying, ‘Wow, he might be right. We might be better than the Red Wings!’ And we proved it.”