Last night seemed like the same exact Devils game we’ve seen over the last three weeks for the first fifty-five minutes.  Dominate early, make journeyman/backup goalie look like a Vezina candidate, get scored on and then lose any confidence and die a quick death.  After losing six straight going into their game against the Sabres, the Devils found themselves behind 2-0 late in the third period last night against the immortal Jhonas Enroth, a goalie who hasn’t actually won a game since 2011!  Many in the sellout crowd of 17,625 started leaving after Bryan Flynn (who?!) scored the Sabres’ second goal at 9:56 of the third.  I was just sitting there in disbelief at the fact we were about to lose our seventh straight game for the first time since 1985-86…yes, even the John MacLean Devils never lost seven straight.

Staring all this negativity in the face, perhaps the Devils finally hit rock bottom in the third period last night.  At last the power play showed some real life for the first time in weeks when Adam Henrique scored at 13:30, a play started by Ilya Kovalchuk keeping the puck in at the left point and standing his ground when Steve Ott tried to knock him off the puck.  Instead, it was Ott who fell to the ice with a broken stick – and Kovy’s wrister deflected off Mike Weber‘s glove right onto the stick of Henrique, who put in the rebound for his seventh goal of the season.  Still down 2-1, I started to get the scary feeling that the season may well be on the line in the last five minutes, with our precarious playoff position and a tougher schedule coming up in the next few weeks.

Finally with sixty-six seconds remaining and the Devils’ net empty, New Jersey caught a break they desperately needed when Enroth left a juicy rebound on a soft David Clarkson shot from just inside the point, and Patrik Elias – who earlier had missed an open net – at last managed to put it behind a diving Enroth.  While Elias’s seventh of the year may have saved the Devils’ bacon the night was far from over…except for Enroth who came up with leg cramps after the goal, and gave way to Ryan Miller (strangely given the night off, after he ran his big yap after Saturday’s game).

Overtime was mostly uneventful except for Mark Fayne nearly getting coned for the second time of the night (the first time giving John Scott of all people a golden chance), and he could only watch as Jason Pominville‘s shot clanged off the post and right back to Johan Hedberg.  Perhaps he deserved that break, since Hedberg himself finally had a good game for the first time in weeks, only allowing a one-timer goal by Thomas Vanek on a Sabres power play at 7:56 of the second period.  Predictably the penalty was taken by Anton Volchenkov, and also predictably Fayne and Bryce Salvador were on the ice watching Vanek get wide open with both of them and Henrique all stuck on the boards.  Incidentally, Salvador himself turned the puck over on Flynn’s goal early in the third period – which may have been borderline goaltender interference too – and the captain’s become the pink elephant in the room as he continues to struggle.

Also predictably toward the end of overtime (similar to Saturday’s game), Tyler Ennis started poking his nose where it doesn’t belong, slashing Travis Zajac after a whistle.  Zajac calmly knocked Ennis’s stick out of his hands, then the two exchanged punches before going to the box for the final half-minute of overtime, leading to some rare three-on-three play.  Neither team really had a good chance on the three-on-three though, and off to the shootout we went again.  With Kovalchuk being stopped again by Miller to open the skills competition and the memory fresh of Hedberg standing like a statue as two Sabre goals went by him last weekend in the shootout, I wasn’t feeling very confident.

Fortunately Vanek (not great in the shootout himself) gave Hedberg an easy save, and David Clarkson of all people came up with a nifty move beating Miller towards his right post.  Moose this time stopped Pominville himself without the aid of the post, then Elias – the end of regulation hero – closed out the shootout with a sick deke of Miller, putting the puck into a vacated net.  Ironically Elias is never usually that effective in shootouts either, it’s definitely the best shootout goal I can remember him getting and it provided an unexpected, satisfying finish to last night’s game.  Not only was it the Devils’ first win in over two weeks, it was their first home win in nearly three weeks, since I was in the ice cream suite for our game against the Flyers in the middle of February.

This could well have been a season-turning win.  We’ll have to wait till this weekend to find out for sure, when the Devils go to Carolina Saturday and return home for another game against the Jets on Sunday night. I’m tired of saying they’re winnable games because literally just about every game during this malaise we’ve played teams below us in the standings that should have been winnable but weren’t.  However, at least for one night we can look past all the negativity and lineup questions of recent weeks.  Elias himself summed it up with one word after the game when he was asked about his thoughts when scoring at the end of regulation….’finally’.