It’s been six months since the Devils got a win that mattered – April 20 last season, to be exact when they beat the Panthers 6-2 in the penultimate weekend of the season keeping their faint playoff hopes alive for another twenty-four hours before losing to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden the next afternoon and being eliminated.  The Devils’ first meaingful game against the Rangers this season was a different story, one of the few truly stress-free wins this team’s had in a while.  Well, almost stress-free, since captain Bryce Salvador and fourth-line dynamo Steve Bernier both left the game due to injury. Salvador’s in particular looked scary at the time when he was caught by the Rangers’ Benoit Pouliot near the boards and crashed in helmet first.  However, he apparently escaped the dreaded head injury and returned, as did Bernier.

Missing from last night’s game were Patrik Elias, Damien Brunner and Ryane Clowe – all of whom are supposedly suffering mild ailments, with Clowe eligible to come off short-term IR before Tuesday’s game in Columbus.  Last night is where the team’s forward depth really came into play, as Rostislav Olesz, Andrei Loiktionov and Mattias Tedenby all came in and had solid games, with Loiktionov scoring the game’s first goal off a rebound of an Anton Volchenkov shot at 7:22.  Just over five minutes later, Olesz got the primary assist on Adam Henrique‘s goal, where he surprisingly used pure power to fire one through Henrik Lundqvist and get the ever-popular dual ‘Henrique!’ and ‘Hen-rik!’ chants going.  All told, four different Devils scored goals and nine different players registered points, including Czech-mates Jaromir Jagr and Marek Zidlicky, who each got a pair of assists.  Surprisingly, this game was no contest by the middle of the second period as Michael Ryder bombed home a power play goal from the blueline – a rarity in recent years, even with Ilya Kovalchuk back there – and then Danius Zubrus would finish off the scoring at 14:32, balooning the Devils’ lead and eventual final tally to 4-0.

Defensively it was the Devils’ most solid game of the season – which perhaps spells good news for Mark Fayne, and bad news for the scratched Adam Larsson. Ironically one of the fans’ favorite targets in Volchenkov had a strong game himself – hitting guys, blocking shots and even getting his third assist of the season. Once every few weeks the A-train reminds us why many Devil fans thought it was a good idea to give him a six-year, big money contract in the 2010 offseason.  Salvador getting hurt looked like it would be a critical blow after a strong start to the season following an off season in the lockout-shortened 2012, but in coach Pete DeBoer‘s words (whole press conference above) when asked if he was surprised at the captain’s return, ‘Not surprised knowing him…he’s a warrior’.  Perhaps the only time where the Devils’ shutout was seriously threatened last night was during the last few minutes of the second period and the Ranger power play that opened the third period after Fayne’s delay of game penalty. Showing how critical he felt being able to put away a game was, DeBoer used his timeout late in the second period up four goals, after an icing.

Despite the fact Cory Schnieder‘s been clearly better than Martin Brodeur in their split of games thus far and Schnieder should be starting Tuesday, last night was in the goaltender’s own words, ‘a team shutout’.  Derek’s assessment that Schnieder was rarely tested was pretty accurate.  After a series of games between the end of last year and the beginning of this year where we won the shot counter game but not the actual goal tally, it was a relief however.  There were no defensive or goaltending breakdowns last night for the first time in a long while and Devil fans were chanting ‘Cory! Cory!’ last night with the same fervor they’ve always chanted ‘Marty! Marty!’. DeBoer accurately pointed out how the fans appreciate good goaltending around here, since they’ve gotten used to it over the last twenty years.

If there were any contreversies over last night, they occured off the ice.  One involved the Devils’ ‘sellout’ total of 16,592 last night, which was far below historical capacity of 17,625. I guess new ownership has a different way of counting seats, but now over a thousand seats dissapeared?  Not like there was a gagillion dollar renovation here like in another building close by.  And our attendance for the Isles home opener was 16,624 (a tick higher than last night) and that wasn’t called a sellout.  The other mini-contreversy was the goal song, which turned out to be Seven Nation Army – the first in a series of three different songs that’ll be tried out and voted on.  If last night was any indication though, the Devils really ought to just give up the ghost and bring back Rock and Roll Part 2.  They all but admit they got rid of the song because of the ‘you suck’ chant…so what do the fans do? Shrewdly add a ‘you suck’ to the oh oh oh oh chant of SNA.  I guess this is what it’s going to be now, we add you suck to every song.  I have to admit that’s a lot better of a protest than just booing every goal song and kind of hilarious to be honest, although it also proves the fans raged against losing RR2 for one reason and one reason only, which is not the ‘history’ of the song or the memories attached to it.

Off-ice contreversies and the fact it was ‘only’ one win aside, it was nice to actually see a dominant game against our rivals and get a smidge of hope back for this season.  At least the Devils’ winning goaltender had the right perspective afterward though:

Tom Gulitti ‏@TGfireandice10h

Schneider: “It’s just one. We can’t sit here and say, ‘Well, we figured it out.’ We’ve got to keep at it and play like that all the time.”