With Martin Brodeur set to return after three weeks off, I literally could have seen anything happen tonight in Carolina – or so I thought.  Anything from a repeat of his transcendent shutout in 2009 against Colorado after four months on the shelf, to him being rusty and allowing a handful of goals and/or making a costly puckhandling mistake and really sending us off the deep end after all of Johan Hedberg‘s puckhandling adventures.  Of all the scenarios I imagined though, this wasn’t one of them:

No misprint there, and April Fool’s is still a couple weeks away.  Yes, Brodeur set an NHL record by scoring the third goal of his career after a bizarre series of events.  At 3:33 of the first, Carolina’s Alex Semin took a tripping penalty but almost as soon as the Devils got on the power play, Marek Zidlicky canceled it out with a penalty of his own.  I literally turned away from the TV and towards the computer for a second and then heard the MSG announcers go nuts about the Devils scoring and I was like ‘WHAT?!’.  With Canes goalie Dan Ellis leaving the crease to go towards the bench, an errant Jordan Staal pass missed whoever was streaking in off the point, bounced off the boards at center ice and took a perfect (for us) carom in, with the puck just beating Ellis back to the net.

Still in disbelief over that, I was even more surprised to learn that indeed Brodeur was the last Devil to touch the puck, tapping a puck out of the crease just before the penalty and got the goal.  At that moment this felt like a game the Devils could not lose.  Yet, through the first ten minutes of the game it was Carolina that dominated, immediately testing Brodeur’s readiness.  If his goal was fluky, his puckstopping was not – making several crucial saves (and getting a couple of fortunate bounces too) to keep that 1-0 lead despite a Canes surge that crested with the aformentioned power play opportunity – extended to a full two minutes when Semin actually left the box, because Brodeur’s goal was technically on the power play.  I was actually annoyed, it seemed like the Devils were content to let Marty win the game by himself and in a must-win situation I was really worried.

However, after the first TV timeout the Devils settled down although they didn’t create much offense of their own outside of the ‘goal’, being outshot 11-4 in the opening twenty minutes.  Most of those eleven shots came in the first ten minutes though, as defensively the Devils picked it up after that.  Once the defense fell into line, the offense eventually followed, although it took a long time for that second, critical breakthrough.  An Adam Larsson shot from the point hit off Ilya Kovalchuk in front, and bounced right to Adam Henrique, who chipped home the rebound at 12:52 for his tenth goal of the season.

Now up 2-0, the Devils took advantage of some 4-on-4 action to create a highlight reel goal just forty-six seconds later, with some brilliant work by Travis Zajac along the boards and a nice drop pass by Patrik Elias finding a streaking Peter Harrold.  After Ellis made the initial save on Harrold, he batted home the rebound off a backhand that showed terrific hand-eye coordination.  Harrold scored his second in three games, after not having a single goal as a Devil before this week, and gave the Devils a (gasp!) comfortable-feeling 3-0 lead.  With the Devils outshooting Carolina 18-7 in the final two periods it felt like the game was in total control for most of the night, a feeling that has been missing much of the season.

My only moment of semi-consternation came when Brodeur’s shutout was foiled moments into a Carolina power play when Jeff Skinner fired a rocket that may have glanced off Bryce Salvador‘s stick, and did dip under Brodeur’s glove at 11:27 of the third to get Carolina on the board.  At this point, a mostly comatose Carolina crowd finally came to life and I was just thinking to myself, ‘please don’t let them get another one, I’d like at least one lousy game where I don’t have a feeling of impending doom’.  After Skinner had two good chances on his next shift however, the Devils regained control.  A tripping call on Eric Staal proved decisive when the Devils re-gained their three-goal cushion at 16:54 when Andrei Loktionov cemented his own happy return after a week-long absence with a backhand goal off a rebound in the slot for his fifth goal of the season.

However, the night as usual belonged to Brodeur with the game’s first star – along with another NHL record.  And yes, he handled the puck flawlessly.  One moment in particular during the second period showed me how much he was missed just for that skill, when he was able to turn around, gather the puck and fire a perfect no-look backhander around to his defenseman in one fluid motion.  Even if Hedberg didn’t make mistakes, he could never do that.  Very few can.  More importantly for the team however, this win stopped the bleeding and gave them a much-needed win over another playoff contender.  And with the out-of-town scoreboard bringing mostly good news (Rangers/Islanders losing), that just shows how much things can change on the snap of a finger.  Tuesday’s loss to the Rangers was canceled out tonight, for all intents and purposes.

There’s little time to rest however, the Devils have to do what the Rangers did not tonight and beat a Panther team that’s suddenly showed some fight winning two straight despite injury woes and being for all intents and purposes the only East team out of the playoff picture.  As I said the other night, this is the time the Devils need to make some hay.  The time for excuses is over now that ‘most’ of the cavalry’s back, and the schedule spaces out in terms of games played over the number of days left in the season.