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Devils’ Assistant Coach Recchi to Join Philly Sports Hall of Fame

Another person connected to the Devils will be entering a hall of fame.

Amanda Stein is reporting that Devils’ assistant coach Mark Recchi will be a member of the 2021 class of the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame.

Recchi, who Stein mentions is in the Hockey Hall of Fame, played for the Flyers from 1991-92 to halfway through 1994-95 and again from 1998 to 2004. He played 602 games (of his 1,652 career NHL games) for the Flyers and notched 232 goals and 395 assists for 627 total points in Philly. That was good, as Stein noted, for an over-a-point-per-game pace (1.04).

He is still the Flyers’ single season scoring leader, collecting 53 goals and 70 assists for 123 points in 1992-93.

Overall, he had 1,533 points over 1,652 games in the NHL playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins, Carolina Hurricanes, Atlanta Thrashers and Tampa Bay Lightning in addition to his two stints with the Flyers.

He won Stanley Cups with the Penguins (twice: in 1991 and 2008) and the Bruins (2011).

He also won two Cups with the Penguins while working the hockey ops (2016 and 2017). In Pittsburgh, he was an assistant coach and Director of Player Development. He joined the Devils in 2020 as an assistant coach.

Congratulations to Mark Recchi on this wonderful achievement.

In some other, admittedly sadder news, former Devils’ defenseman Tom Kurvers passed away today at the age of 58 of cancer. He had been serving as the assistant general manager of the Minnesota Wild at the time of his death.

Kurvers was born in Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth where he won the Hobey Baker Award as the top NCAA men’s player in 1984.

He was drafted 145th overall in 1981 by the Montreal Canadiens and was in Montreal when the Habs won the Stanley Cup in 1986.

He was eventually traded to the Buffalo Sabres and, prior to the 1987-88 season, was dealt to the Devils. The Devils gave up a third-round pick in the 1987 Entry Draft (Andrew MacVicar).

In the 1988 playoffs during the Devils Cinderella run to the Wales Conference Finals, Kurvers notched six goals and nine assists for 15 total points.

He would play 131 games with the Devils – from 1987-88 to one game in 1989-90 – and collect 21 goals and 79 assists for an even 100 points.

On October 16, 1989, the Devils dealt him to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Toronto’s first-round pick in the 1991 Entry Draft. That pick would turn into Scott Niedermayer.

He played from 1984 until 1995 for the Canadiens, Sabres, Devils, Leafs, Islanders, Canucks and Mighty Ducks of Anaheim – the team he retired from.

Following his playing career, he worked in broadcasting and scouting for the Phoenix Coyotes and the front office of the Tampa Bay Lightning and Wild. He was inducted into the University of Minnesota-Duluth Hall of Fame in 1991.

Condolences to the family and friends of Tom Kurvers.

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Devils Re-Up Nate Bastian

Nathan Bastian has been re-signed by the Devils to a two-year contract worth $1,650,000 ($775,000 in 2021-22 and $875,000 in 2022-23) according to Amanda Stein. He was to be a restricted free agent this summer.

The 23-year-old forward comes off of his best year at the NHL level, playing in 41 games and notching three goals and seven assists (ten points) according to Stein.

He was also a known physical commodity. Stein said that he had 136 hits to lead the team in that category this season. That made him two off the pace in hits to lead NHL rookies. He finished second behind the Montreal Canadiens’ Alexander Romanov, who had 138 in 12 more games played than Bastian.

He was drafted by the Devils 41st overall in the second round of the 2016 Draft.

Bastian told Stein during the May exit interviews: “Most nights we were playing against the top lines,” in reference to he, Miles Wood and Michael McLeod. “At the end of games, if we’re up, defending a 6-on-5, our line is probably out there. Earning that respect from your coach is everything. I started to feel as the year went on gaining the respect of your teammates and the respect of your coach. You wake up one day and feel like an NHLer. I think if you told me coming into the year, I’d be a regular, I’d say that’s a success for me.”

Stein mentioned the faith that Devils coach Lindy Ruff placed in Bastian, noting that “Ruff could rely on [Bastian] during the penalty kill and defending a lead in the final minutes of a game.”

As Bastian told Sam Kasan for a feature on the fourth line (or BMW Line as they are known) on the Devils’ website, “[a]s the year went on, we got more and more comfortable. Later in the year we learned to play 16, 17 minutes a night. At the start of the year I was getting nine, 10, 11 minutes. Which is fine. I think we became more responsible and I think we handled it pretty well.”