There are just two players who are left on the Devils’ roster from the last time Stefan Noesen was a New Jersey Devil: Nico Hischier and Jesper Bratt.
Both Nico and Jesper still sit in the same spots in the locker room that they did when they first entered the league in 2017, while Noesen, in his second stint has moved to a new spot. But Noesen has quite the memories of what it was like in his first stall in the Devils’ locker room.
He sat next to a dynamic duo of sorts, best friends Bratt and Pavel Zacha.
“They sat next to each other and talked the whole time,” Noesen said with a bit of snark in his tone. “They’d talk the whole time, about watches, about cars, all this stuff. They would just pull random artifacts out, different fun facts about cars and horsepower. I loved it too."
Did he learn anything?
“I knew all of it, by the end of their conversation,” he joked. “But I wasn't sitting there, like, talking about the new, upcoming, two year out model of a BMW. I’m just sitting there, like ‘Great’.”
When it comes to his own space in a locker room stall, Noesen isn’t too particular. He's pretty easygoing he says. But he does expect some sort of respect for the area separation.
Noesen spent the last three seasons in Carolina, before re-joining New Jersey this summer. And well, his stallmate didn't quite have the same respect for those seat separations.
"I sat next to Brenden Lemieux last year and everything was like a free-for-all,” Noesen laughed. “His stuff is on my side, it’s on his side, it’s over there and halfway across the room.”
“I’m just like, ‘What, what are you even doing here? Do you even need all this (stuff) in your stall?’”
To make matters worse, across the room, a stall mate, particularly one who appreciates the boundaries, anyone could be envious of. Across the room, Noesen looked in jealousy. There sat defenseman Brent Burns. As rugged as he may look with his bushy beard and enormous traveling knapsack, everything, Noesen said, was always in order.
“Burnsey, across the way, he has like 38 thousand things, but they’re all perfectly lined up. All perfect in front of his stall. Like, ‘Why can’t you do that? Do you have to have your sweatshirt where I’m sitting?’” he said, jokingly talking about Lemieux.
Now, Noesen sits in a different stall in the Devils' locker room from the one he was in all those years ago. He sits in a corner, with Kurtis MacDermid on his right and Curtis Lazar perpendicular to his.
Noesen shares his stories in the best of spirits, all in good fun. But he was definitely serious about respecting each person's stall.
“You know the lines?” he said, motioning to represent the stall seat separation. “Yeah. You know, that’s my space.”
