When the Devils have three home games in a week, often I’ll opt just to sell one of them off and go to the other two games.  With last Saturday being my goofy Mets-Devils doubleheader (yes I went to both games in the same day – that’s a seperate story in itself) and considering most of my friends are going to the Friday game against Ottawa, it was an easy call to sell off tonight’s game against the Bruins – especially with it being a 7:30 weeknight game.  Admittedly I wasn’t too upset to sell off this game considering the Bruins have just flat had our number…winning ten out of eleven games with our only win being the meaningless Fan Appreciation Day game in 2011 that was Jacques Lemaire‘s final game behind the bench.

Essentially the Bruins have won ten in a row against us that mattered.  And we lost seven in a row overall coming into tonight.  I didn’t exactly think we had much of a chance, and I was wrestling with whether to even watch the game.  Part of me was like ‘the Devils are trying, they deserve to have me go down with the ship and watch’, but the other part of me that was just tired of seeing Sissyphus roll the boulder up the hill won out.  I needed a break from the futility, period.  I stayed away from the game and anything around the NHL as long as I could.  Finally I was going to SiriusXM Radio and saw on the NHL channel they had the Toronto-Ranger game going to a shootout.  So I tuned that in, and that’s when I found out the Devils were trailing 4-2 after two periods and I was like…of course.

As it turned out it was probably a good thing I missed almost all the game.  Even if the Devils showed some fight, coming from 4-0 down to get within one before coming up short in yet another frustrating loss to the Bruins.  Not only can the Devils never beat the Bruins, they can’t beat anyone at this point.  Of our eight straight losses, seven have been by one goal, with the Islanders’ two-goal win the only multi-goal loss.  You can’t say the Devils aren’t trying, or that they’re just getting blown away.  Fact is pretty much every game’s been the same script though.  Bad teams find ways to lose games, and this year the Devils are a bad team – especially without Ilya Kovalchuk.

I might have thrown myself off the balcony if I’d witnessed our horrendous power play in person tonight.  Not only did the Devils go an embarassing 0-8 with the man advantage, they gave up two shorthanded goals to boot.  I don’t want to kill Matt Shaw, because Devil fans have been killing the power play coach for years, but it’s reached a new low this year – with and without Kovalchuk.  Going a -2 on eight man advantages is about as low as you can get.  Maybe Dave Barr should coach the PP as well as the PK, at least that unit’s been somewhat respectable.  They did give up one power play goal in three chances, but also scored shorthanded to at least even it up for the night.

At this point I don’t even want to look at the recap.  Just seeing the boxscore is ugly enough, with three goals given up in the game’s first 8:12, including both shorthanded fiascoes.  It was amusing seeing the highlights on the first two goals, with Anton Volchenkov being beyond bad on the first goal and Steve Sullivan throwing a dumb blind backhand pass on the second goal that led to a fatal two-on-one break.  Amusing because I didn’t have to live through it in real-time at least.  Maybe that first goal contributed to Volchenkov’s state of mind later when he elbowed Brad Marchand and got thrown out of the game late in the second period, forcing the Devils to kill off a five-minute major and likely leading to an ill-timed suspension.

Amazingly the Devils not only killed off the major penalty, but even scored when Travis Zajac converted a breakaway for just his sixth goal in forty games.  Patrik Elias had scored on a tip-in earlier to get the Devils on the board, after Zdeno Chara‘s tip-in off a netmouth scramble in front gave the Bruins a seemingly safe 4-0 lead early in the second.  Despite not having Volchenkov or captain Bryce Salvador (who left with a wrist injury) for the latter part of the game and being reduced to four defensemen for the last twenty-five minutes, the Devils gamely tried to rally back and Andy Greene scored 5:58 into the third to make it 4-3.  However, the four-man defense finally broke when Mark Fayne was slow to reach a loose puck, then inexplicably left Tyler Seguin alone in front for a back-breaking goal at 7:33.  A final-minute goal by Matt D’Agostini of all people served as more torment than consolation.

With the playoffs all but out of reach now (playoffs?!  PLAYOFFS?!), my goals are more modest at this point.  Number one is to get Martin Brodeur at least one more win the remainder of the season, so he doesn’t have to be stuck on the ungodly number of 666 anymore.  Maybe it really isn’t a coincidence that the Devils have appeared cursed since that unholy number with Kovalchuk getting hurt in that game and the Devils losing eight straight since.  Perhaps they need to sacrifice a live chicken, or do something else kooky to break the spell.  Number two is to find out who should stay and who should go.  With several key UFA’s on the docket and clearly offensive upgrades needed across the board, important decisions will have to be made in the offseason.

On a personal note though, it’s disgusting the contempt some Devils ‘fans’ have for Salvador, between message board postings and various tweets toward Tom Gulutti while he was posting updates on the captain’s health during the game – and he rightly called out people on it.  I mean this is the same fanbase that once cheered Kevin Weekes getting hurt so I shouldn’t be surprised, but it doesn’t mean I’m not dissapointed just the same.  Yes, Sal hasn’t been good this year and re-signing him led to our defensive logjam, but he’s been a loyal soldier here and deserves better than he gets from clowns that post or tweet in mostly anonymous fashion on the internet.  Did anyone really expect the point production he had during last year’s playoffs?  That’s not who he is.  Other people have underperformed as well, why is Sal the scapegoat for many, because he’s wearing the scarlet C?

My only consolation is that this mess of a season isn’t going to last too much longer.  I shudder to think what this season might turn into if we were going the normal 82-game distance – though conversely there’d be more time to fight out of this hole.  Now there’s just eight games left, and only two home games I have to go to since my friend is coming to the game Friday and the Fan Appreciation Day home finale against Pittsburgh.  I have free tickets to the Panthers game on the 20th (sold off my pair because of it) so I can ‘skip’ that game if it’s meaningless which it’ll likely be at this point, but it’ll probably be a nice Saturday out so I might as well go anyway.  Especially since it’s going to be a while before I see the building again after April.  Not to mention I have to use some more of the food and beverage card I still have for the arena before it expires at the end of the regular season.