Claude Lemieux was funny, salty and refreshingly honest — and he will be greatly missed
The phone rang. My editor was not much for small talk. “You’ve been looking forward to covering the Knicks in the playoffs, right?” he asked.
“Absoutely,” 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.
“You’re on the Devils,” he told me. I started to protest. He cut me off. “Simple geography,” he said. “We’re a Jersey paper. You’re a Jersey columnist. They’re Jersey’s team.”
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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 — it was during those playoffs I first became friends with the great Larry Brooks.
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