The New Jersey Devils cultivated a well-deserved reputation over the past decade as one of the NHL’s stingiest teams, due largely to the indomitable presence of captain Scott Stevens. Put simply, their gritty captain was the very embodiment of the three-time Stanley Cup champions, always putting the team’s success above individual achievement. And tonight, for the first time in franchise history, the Devils will retire a jersey number when they raise Stevens’s no. 4 to the rafters in a ceremony preceding their clash with the NHL’s best team, the Carolina Hurricanes.

Not long after he arrived in the NHL in 1982, Stevens became well known as a hard-hitting, two-way blueliner. He was a bit reckless in the early years of his career with the Washington Capitals, fighting frequently and taking numerous undisciplined penalties, but he was also one of the NHL’s most feared defensemen. In 1990, the St. Louis Blues decided to tender a contract offer to Steven, who was a restricted free agent at the time. When the Capitals declined to match the Blues’ generous offer, St. Louis was forced to compensate Washington with five first-round picks.

Just one year later, the Blues again went after a restricted free agent. This time, it was Devils power forward Brendan Shanahan. And because the Blues didn’t have any first-round picks to provide the Devils as compensation for Shanahan, it was left to an arbitrator to decide what St. Louis should give up. The Blues submitted a seemingly reasonable offer of two talented young players, goaltender Curtis Joseph and forward Rod Brind’Amour. The Devils, meanwhile, asked for Stevens. The arbitrator decided in the Devils’ favor, and the rest was history.

Upon arriving in New Jersey, Stevens demonstrated significant offensive ability to go along with his trademarked open-ice hits and steadying leadership, tallying 194 points in his first three seasons with the Devils.

“Every year, I always felt that I had to make the team,” Stevens told the Associated Press yesterday. “I felt every training camp I had to prove myself. I never took anything for granted.”

That blue collar approach immediately made Stevens a favorite of Devils fans, and it spurred general manager Lou Lamoriello to make him the team’s captain in 1992.

But as young defenseman Scott Niedermayer emerged as the Devils’ best offensive blueliner, and as new head coach Jacques Lemaire implemented a more conservative system, Stevens redirected his focus entirely to protecting the defensive zone and, in particular, young goaltender Martin Brodeur’s crease.

For the next decade, the Devils’ defensive zone was among the most dangerous areas in the NHL for opposing forwards. Bone-crushing hits delivered to the Detroit’s Slava Kozlov in 1995, Philadelphia’s Eric Lindros in 2000, Carolina’s Shane Willis in 2001, and Anaheim’s Paul Kariya in 2003 set the tone each time the Devils reached the Stanley Cup Finals. And in three of the four Finals in which they played under Stevens’s watch, the Devils emerged triumphant.

Ironically, it was a fluke play that ultimately ended the captain’s career. In the 2003 playoffs against Tampa Bay, Lightning forward Fredrik Modin shot the puck into the Devils’ zone and hit Stevens in the head. The irrepressible Stevens returned the very next game and helped the Devils later win their third Stanley Cup. But the following season, Stevens wasn’t right, and he left the lineup for good due to the the post-concussion symptoms he was experiencing.

The NHL’s all-time leader in games played by a defenseman, Stevens scored 908 points while registering 2,785 penalty minutes in a career that spanned three decades and 22 seasons. The second future Hall of Famer to have his number retired this year in the New York metropolitan area, it is no stretch to say that Stevens was at least as important to the success of the Devils as Mark Messier was to the Rangers. And in a few years, it’s quite likely that they’ll enter the Hall of Fame together, staunch rivals and mirror images of excellence.

Mr. Greenstein is the editor-in-chief of InsideHockey.com.