The Devils Red and Black

Lore & Background

When the NHL announced an expansion franchise for New Jersey in 1982, the organization held a public naming contest. The name 'Devils' won, and with it came an immediate visual mandate: red, black, and white. The colors were chosen to be aggressive, to be unmistakable on a television screen, and to carry the weight of the infernal mascot. From the first puck drop at the Meadowlands Coliseum before the team settled into its own purpose-built arena, those three colors became shorthand for a community that had waited years for a team of its own.

The Continental Airlines Arena, opened in 1982 in the East Rutherford Meadowlands, became the spiritual home of the franchise for over three decades. It was where Scott Niedermayer's wrist shot silenced opponents, where Brian Leetch's passes set up the 2000 and 2001 Cup runs, where the 2003 parade through Newark streets turned the city red. The building's intimate scale—smaller than many modern arenas—meant the crowd noise was a physical force, and the red seats made the entire bowl look like a single, breathing organism.

The move to the Prudential Center in Newark in 2017 was both a logistical necessity and a cultural shift. The new building is larger, more modern, and sits in the heart of the city the team had long paraded through after championships. Yet the identity remained: the red devil head on the ice, the black-and-red jerseys, the same chants, the same fierce loyalty. The colors did not change; the community simply found a bigger room to shout in.

In Their Own Story

The scoreboard reads 19:42, third period, and the Prudential Center is a pressure chamber. A puck rips off a skater's blade and skates across the ice toward the blue line. For two seconds the building holds its breath—twenty thousand people, red scarves, black caps, the smell of hot dogs and cold breath hanging in the air. Then the puck crosses the line, a backhand pass threads the slot, and the release is a crack like a gunshot. The net bulges. The sound that follows is not a cheer; it is a detonation. Strangers grab strangers. A kid in a too-big Zach Parise jersey is lifted onto a father's shoulders. The red seats ripple like a wave hitting a shore, and somewhere in the third row a woman is screaming a name she has been screaming since 2000, since the first Cup, since the colors were still new and the whole state was still figuring out what it meant to be a Devils town. The ice glistens under the lights. The devil head on the center ice logo stares up at the rafters, patient and eternal.

Reader's Guide

You feel it before you hear it. The concrete of the Prudential Center parking lot vibrates under your boots as the crowd filters in, a low rumble that builds with every minute until the doors open and the sound swallows you whole. The concourse is a river of red and black—hoodies, beanies, the classic devil-head cap, kids in full jerseys with the number 12 or 27 or 64 stitched across the back. The air smells of popcorn, stale beer, and the particular cold that clings to the walls even in February.

You climb to your seat. The bowl is steep, intimate, the red plastic seats catching the arena lights and throwing them back in a warm glow. The ice below is a white mirror, the center logo a black-and-red devil's head rendered in paint and tape. Zamboni tracks still glisten where they were laid twenty minutes ago. The jumbotron flickers to life and the building exhales, then inhales, then roars.

The first faceoff is a gunshot. Sticks crack. Skates bite the ice in a spray of white powder that hangs in the spotlights. A fan two rows up throws a foam finger. Someone three rows down is doing the 'Devils' chant—three claps, a stomp, a yell—and you find your hands moving with the rhythm before you've decided to. That's the thing about a Devils game: you don't watch it. You're inside it. The red and black isn't a color scheme. It's a frequency, and once it hits your chest, you can't tune it out.

Between periods the bar lines snake through the concourse, the clink of glasses, the murmur of a thousand half-arguments about line changes. A kid presses his face to the glass and watches the skaters lace their boots, the pucks stacked in a little pyramid on the bench. The ice shimmers. The lights hum. And when the horn sounds for the second period, the whole building shifts in its seat, and you are part of it, red and black and loud, and the night is young and the puck is still in play.

Did You Know?

• The Devils' name was selected through a public fan contest in 1982, and the red-and-black color scheme was adopted immediately as part of the new identity, becoming one of the most recognizable palettes in the NHL.
• The Continental Airlines Arena in the East Rutherford Meadowlands served as the Devils' home from 1982 until 2017, a span of more than three decades during which the team captured three Stanley Cups.
• The 2003 Stanley Cup parade through the streets of Newark, New Jersey, became a defining moment of the franchise's relationship with the community, drawing hundreds of thousands of fans to the city center.
• The Devils' red, black, and white color scheme has remained essentially unchanged since the franchise's inception in 1982, making it one of the most visually consistent identities in professional North American sports.