After forty seconds, last night looked like it would be a walkover when Travis Zajac‘s blast sent the sellout crowd at the Rock into a frenzy before most had even sat down from the anthem.  Twenty minutes later, it looked as if it would be a horror show after three straight Flyers goals gave the team in white and orange a 3-1 lead.  However, the Devils again rallied for a come-from-behind win, continuing to show off their depth with five goals scored by five different players in an eventual 5-3 final.

Surely last night wasn’t the Devils’ best game of the young season, but it was indiciative of how good this team can be even when it’s not firing on all cylinders.  Early on however, the game was giving me flashbacks of a not-so-good kind, specifically the start of the 2011-12 season when every team was cutting through us like a hot knife with butter. Coach Pete DeBoer was probably right (as usual) when he said the team might have thought it was going to be easy after that quick goal.  Especially given our five straight wins against the Flyers dating back to last postseason.

That’s a potentially fatal mistake to make against any rival team though, especially one with as much offensive skill as the Flyers have.  Even with very little special teams play last night (one minor penalty each), the Flyers made their lone power play chance midway through the first period count when Wayne Simmonds scored on a nice turnaround backhand at 9:27.  Little did I know then, the floodgates were open for a near-disaster. Less than two minutes later Mike Knuble scored on a one-timer from the slot after Ruslan Fedotenko found the near-ageless winger with a timely feed for his second goal of the season at 11:15.  After several minutes of bad play leading up to the two goals, DeBoer had seen enough and used his timeout.

It didn’t help.

Just 48 seconds later Matt Read scored the Flyers’ third off a one-timer down low and it looked like the tidal wave was in full force now.  Fortunately the team finally settled down and picked up its play a little in the final few minutes, but the game remained at 3-1 headed into the intermission.  Whatever was said in the locker room during those fifteen minutes probably helped (young Adam Larsson – who played his best game perhaps ever last night – credited Martin Brodeur and Patrik Elias with ‘settling us down’ at that point).  Also helping was the return of Ponikarovsky…already on the ice for the first goal after being reunited with Zajac and Russian buddy Ilya Kovalchuk, he resumed his role of scoring key goals against the Flyers after just twenty-six seconds.

Brodeur himself started the play with a long bomb to Kovalchuk, who then found an open Ponikarovsky with a nice touch pass.  My Little Poni fired a hard wrister past Ilya Bryzgalov to give the big Ukranian winger a wildly successful return to the Devils’ lineup. To get a sense of how at home Ponikarovsky must have felt last night, you need only look at the icetimes for his last two games – both against the Flyers.  On Tuesday in Winnipeg, Poni played barely ten minutes in a 3-2 loss to the Flyers.  Last night, he played a hair under twenty minutes.  As good as young Stefan Matteau has been for his age, he isn’t gonna get that kind of icetime this year – and it turned out he was the one who went to the press box last night to accomodate Poni’s return.  Perhaps he’ll be returned to juniors before a year runs off his FA clock.  Or not.

My funniest moment (inadvertently) last night came during the second period, while me and my friend were enjoying the game from a suite with ice cream, snacks, and water/hot drinks as one of my sth perks – an ice cream suite upgrade for last night.  I was quite looking forward to it, both because of the snacks and because the suites are the only area I hadn’t yet sat in for a game since the Prudential Center opened five years ago. Much to my surprise we were also visited by the mascot early in the first period, and Devils alums Grant Marshall and Bruce Driver during the first intermission, who each handed out small autographed pictures!  Anyway, back to my funny moment…with very little in terms of penalties or real scoring chances during much of the second period, I turned to my friend and said innocuously, ‘There really hasn’t been much going on this period’.

It was about fifteen seconds later that Patrik Elias scored the tying goal.

Ah, but that’s hockey in a nutshell isn’t it?  No action one second, then the game can change completely with one play.  Again, Kovy played the role of feeder finding a wide-open Elias just beyond the slot, and Elias’s one-timer barely trickled past Bryzgalov and over the line to tie the game at 15:40, giving the Czech winger his fourth goal of the season.  Now tied at 3, things looked infinitely better for the home team, despite the fact the Flyers would go on to outshoot the Devils in every single period last night.

With only six shots for the Flyers in the third period, and the Devils not getting any in the first ten minutes of play, it seemed like the next goal would finally decide this wild tilt, and again it was the Devils converting on a beautifully constructed goal.  This time it was the young Larsson who fired an accurate shot from the point with David Clarkson in between him and the net, and Clarkson’s well-timed tip gave him his tenth goal of the season and the Devils their second lead of the night, at 10:43 of the third.

Now with the lead, the Devils took few chances and with the lack of special teams play, the third was relatively drama-free thankfully.  Steve Bernier scored into an empty-net at 18:24 (the one he didn’t have a chance to get on the Island to finish what would have been an unlikely hat trick) and the Devils had an incredible sixth straight win against the Flyers sewn up.  With another game on Long Island tonight – where have we heard that before?! – the Devils have little time to savor this win, as is normally the case during this lockout-shortened season which is incredibly almost 1/3 over already.  Tonight’s game is our fourth against the Islanders already in the first fifteen games of the season, and Johan Hedberg will be making his second start against the Isles this month, hoping to duplicate his goose-egg effort two weekends ago.