Everything Old is New Again in Jersey

(Guest posted by James Craven of The O Files)

Jacques Lemaire was hired to coach the New Jersey Devils. Again. The 1990's live. Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick are doing highlights on SportsCenter on ESPN, the Devils are playing at Brendan Byrne Continental Airlines Arena, the left wing lock (or as it is better known, the neutral zone trap) is legal, and I'm living in the backwater town of Emporia, Virginia, where the most excitng thing there is watcing the delivery truck back into the Winn-Dixie. It's like he never left.

Well, things change. Olbermann and Patrick now do highlights on Football Night in America, the Devils now play a couple blocks away from Newark Penn Station at Prudential Center, the trap play is now illegal in the NHL, I came back to Philadelphia (my birthplace) and Winn-Dixie closed in Emporia when the company went bankrupt, but Lemaire left Jersey a few years ago for the Minnesota Wild. And it's not the first time that a coach has returned to a team he led to past glory.

The most prime example is Billy Martin, who led the New York Yankees four times while Fat George Steinbrenner fired managers on a semiannual basis until Joe Torre settled him down in 1996. And George Halas not only owned the Chicago Bears, but four times coached "Da Bears" ten years at a time. So if the Devils win Lord Stanley's mug next season, don't say that I warned you. In the words of two-time Yankees manager Yogi Berra, it wopuld be deja vu all over again.