Devils troll Rangers with ‘Instagram hockey’ T-shirts

Fans who purchase a three-games tickets plan will receive a reward

Devils troll Rangers with ‘Instagram hockey’ T-shirts

The New Jersey Devils are turning a viral moment with one of their biggest rivals into a marketing opportunity.

Two weeks after New York Rangers MSG analyst Steve Valiquette blasted forward Jack Hughes for “Instagram hockey” after the star attempted to score on goalie Igor Shesterkin with a dangle Valiquette deemed disrespectful, the Devils have now made sure his quote is never forgotten.

Fans who purchase a three-game Devils ticket plan will receive an “Instagram hockey” T-shirt, a ticket representative confirmed to NJ Advance Media on Wednesday. The Hockey Writers’ Daniel Amoia was the first to report the offer.

The play that drew Valiquette’s ire was a breakaway during the Devils’ 5-1 win on Dec. 2 at Madison Square Garden. Hughes tried “The Forsberg,” named after Hall of Famer Peter Forsberg, in which Hughes faked one way and pulled a hand off his stick to tuck the puck in the other side. Rangers goalie Igor Shesterkin stopped the puck, but it didn’t stop Valiquette from criticizing Hughes during the intermission.

Valiquette, a former Rangers goalie who also leads Clear Sight Analytics, didn’t like the disrespect toward the current New York goalie.

“And this is the (breakaway) 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 (Rangers) bench. 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.’ And that’s blatant disrespect. And I’m sort of surprised I didn’t see a response from the (Rangers) that way.”

MSG host John Giannone didn’t want to stop the conversation there.

“Is that how you read it? I’m interested to hear more about that, like, what did you read about that body language or that moment?” Giannone said. ”Because maybe it was, he just knows that Igor is really good on breakaways, and didn’t want to shoot right away.

Valiquette responded: “No, he’s had success against Igor playing him straight up. And I thought he slowed down. He wanted to put a fancy move on. It was more Instagram hockey than intense hockey. There wasn’t much of a back check, so that allowed him to do it. But I’m looking at him going like this and doing what in a practice a goalie would get mad at a teammate for doing, saying that would never happen in the game.

When Hughes was asked in the post-game what he felt about the comments, he said, “I don’t even know what that means. Like, what does that even mean?”

It would not be surprising to see these T-shirts make widespread appearances on Monday when the Devils will try to bury the Rangers, who have lost 11 of 14 games, at Prudential Center.