15 DEVILS2 CHERE FAYTOK

It took Devils defenseman Ken Daneyko five hours to drive 22 miles to get to the game on Jan. 22, 1987, in a blizzard.

(CHRIS FAYTOK)

He looked out the window of his Long Island home and saw the blanket of white, then he turned on the radio and listened to the grim-and-getting-grimmer weather forecast. But Robert Miller was young, and he already had paid for his Devils season tickets, and he decided that nothing -- not even a blizzard -- would keep him from making the journey to the Meadowlands.

It was Jan. 22, 1987. The harrowing trip on the Long Island Expressway and across the George Washington Bridge took more than three hours that night, and it was only when he and his girlfriend arrived at the arena that they realized they were among the lucky ones.

"The parking lot was covered with snow drifts. Nobody had shoveled the stairs at Brendan Byrne Arena," Miller said. "We arrived late, but the game hadn't started and the building was empty."

Empty is an exaggeration, but not by much. Miller had no idea as he settled into his seats in Section 116 that he about to witness one of the strangest nights in Devils -- and, for that matter, NHL -- history.

He had no idea that, 30 years later, he would be part of an odd and extremely exclusive club that bore witness to that moment.

Only 4,124 fans were in attendance when Wilt Chamberlain had his 100-point game in 1962, but how many more over the years claimed that they had a seat in Hershey Sports Arena that day (or believed it was in Madison Square Garden when they told their fib)? Only 61,946 fans saw the first Super Bowl -- or, as it was called then, the AFL-NFL World Championship Game -- but how many countless more claimed to have seen pro football's transformational moment?

The number of Devils fans in attendance that wintery night in 1987 can never be inflated. The team wanted to thank them for making the trip, so it passed around a yellow legal pad through the cavernous arena and asked everyone to sign it to receive a gift.

All 334 fans at the game received a badge from the Devils.

"The 334 Club" was born. That group of diehards (and, Miller said, a few stragglers from the nearby racetrack looking for warm shelter) shares a bond with the players who were on the ice. The details are still fresh because nothing like it had happened before or since.

Ken Daneyko had played 1,283 games in his NHL career. Only once did it take him and four teammates -- Joe Cirella was driving with Pat Verbeek, Kirk Muller and John MacLean also in the SUV -- five hours to make the trip from their homes in the Madison area to the Meadowlands, usually a breezy 25-mile drive.

"I've never seen anything like it," Daneyko said. "There was nobody on the roads, which was a good thing, because there were times when we had to cross (the median) to go on the other side of the highway."

At least the Daneyko traveling party kept the car in drive. Doug Sulliman, a Devils forward, couldn't get onto the ramp entering the arena complex because of all the abandoned cars, so he drove the final two miles up the wrong side of the road in reverse. He wasn't supposed to play that night, but it was all hands on deck.

"It took us five, five and a half hours to get there," Daneyko said. "We got to the arena and the game started 15 minutes later."

The puck dropped after a 105-minute delay, and the scene in the building was surreal. This was before the Devils were a regular Stanley Cup contender, of course, and the team regularly played before half-empty arenas. The crowd expected that night for the Flames: 11,247.

But this felt like a practice. This felt like the pond-hockey games that most of the players had enjoyed in their youth, because every whistle or shout could be heard throughout the building.

"The few fans tried so hard to make it a rowdy, yelling, home-team situation," said Jeff Mazzei, one of the 334, and the players rewarded their efforts with one of their best performances of the season.

The Flames were one of the top teams in the league back then, but the waiting around clearly worked in the Devils favor. Sulliman -- the guy who wasn't even supposed to play -- scored the only hat trick of his career in a come-from-behind 7-5 victory, but the tradition that usually followed never came to pass.

Not many hats, after all, were in the building to throw on the ice. And, given the conditions outside, who would even consider parting with one?

"They were all busting my chops about that one," Sulliman would later say. "There were only one or two hats out there so he threw his baseball cap on the ice just so there was another hat on the ice."

The headlines focused on the crowd and not the result, and a few weeks later, the 334 fans received a letter from the team. "You are hereby inducted and given lifetime membership to a club that cannot grow -- the 334 Club," it read, and a bond was formed.

Miller, who had only missed one home game in his nine years as a season-ticket holder, looks back on the decision to go as youthful indiscretion. A couple years ago, when snow threatened another home game against the Penguins, his daughter asked if they would still make the trip.

"In this weather? Are you crazy?" he replied. Then, like a dedicated member of the 334 Club, he loaded up the car and made the trip anyway.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find Steve on Facebook.