When games like last night come along, you cherish them.  You don’t know how long you’re going to get to watch greatness in action, especially since fellow 41-year olds Martin Brodeur and Jaromir Jagr aren’t always going to be as healthy and productive as they used to be.  Last night however, they both turned back the clock a bit in a 2-1 Devils win over the Lightning, where Jagr scored the game-winning goal on a gorgeous breakaway http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZWIbHYa-Zk, and Brodeur turned aside sixteen shots – only allowing a Steven Stamkos power play goal late in the second period.  Jagr and Brodeur got the first and second stars respectively last night, which is a remarkable confluence given that both are 41years old and future HOF’ers.  Not to mention fellow aging icon Patrik Elias also figured in the first goal, with a sweet shorthanded give-and-go with Adam Henrique that Henrique eventually one-timed past Ben Bishop for the game’s opening goal early in the second period.

I wouldn’t call last night a banner team performance neccesarily, although the Devils did more or less bottle up Tampa’s high-powered offense and controlled the action for 50+ minutes.  Certainly defensively, the Devils’ starting six had another strong game collectively and it’ll be very interesting to see what happens when Bryce Salvador comes back from his foot injury (coming off the heels of the captain missing a couple of games due to a death in the family).  With coach favorite Peter Harrold still around, the Devils now have eight defensemen capable of playing in the NHL assuming you believe Eric Gelinas is here to stay.  Having fourteen forwards on the roster though – not even including Ryane Clowe who it’s probably safe to say has concussion issues yet again though the Devils won’t admit it – means the Devils can only afford to keep seven defensemen this year.  Unless the captain is getting Matvichuked until GM Lou Lamoriello can find a trade he wants, there’s going to be a hard decision made sooner rather than later and even Lou can’t keep kicking that can down the curb forever.

Offensively the Devils have had their issues to be sure, but the 41-year old Jagr has been a godsend with ten points in twelve games.  Signed only after the Devils lost Ilya Kovalchuk to home and rubles galore, Jagr’s consistently been among the team’s best players even when he doesn’t score.  For his part, Jagr a couple of days ago attributed his lack of goalscoring (for him) to his new sticks, given that his old stick company went bankrupt during the offseason.  As he joked above while holding court in the locker room after the game:

‘I’m 41 years old.  I’m not going to blame myself.  I’ve got to blame something else….I can’t blame the hands because they were pretty good to me all my life.  So I blame the sticks’.

While Jagr was in a mostly jovial mood after passing Phil Esposito for career game-winning goals (most of the media mistakenly thought Esposito held the record last night, apparently forgetting about some guy named Gordie Howe who’s still a couple ahead of both of them), he did show a hint of fire when he admitted he just wanted to be part of a team the last couple of years, but now he wants to be great again.

Now I can see why Derek still roots for Jagr…this season’s really my first up-close look at the guy after he’s been a hockey gypsy the last several years bouncing between New York, Russia, Philly, Dallas and Boston.  He’s always been a great talent but you see the off-ice things like his self-awareness, sense of humor and work ethic more day-to-day.  Jagr also cracked that he was better last night because ‘I scored a lot of goals on him (Marty) this morning.  He knows’.  Perhaps their personal duel helped Marty too, and he got better as the game wore on making a couple of key saves in the third although the Devils did keep the Lightning shot total down to a meager four in both the first and third periods.  While Jagr’s bounced around the league, Marty’s still on the same team he was drafted by in 1990 (Jagr’s the only other active NHL’er from that draft).  Fellow goaltender Cory Schnieder‘s lower body injury has given Marty another crack at the starting role a few days after the HOF goalie himself admitted it was Cory’s team.  Assuming Schnieder’s back on the weekend, you figure each goalie will get one game in and then we’ll see what happens after that depending on how both play.  At least Marty’s played better over the last couple of games than he did earlier in the season, and hopefully Cory can kick it back into first gear once he gets over whatever his ailment is.

Ironically everything else went wrong for me yesterday afternoon and last night except for the game itself, and being around my former seatmate and his girlfriend as the seats next to me were vacated again so I moved over and off the aisle.  One of the things that went wrong was trying in vein to post a blog here…apparently if I use the dropdown menu at the top of the screen it says the article posts but it goes into outer space and stupid me didn’t copy it before trying to post last night.  I generally have to click on ‘New Post’ on the upper right hand part of the screen to post an article that’ll actually show up on the front page but last night I tried the other way so I was doing a slow burn at midnight when I saw the article dissapeared.  After a night of short sleep I didn’t feel like doing it over in the morning so here it is now.  Or something slightly different than what I was going to post, which was more of a nuts-and-bolts recap.

And since I was at the game, here’s my daily update on the arena atmosphere…predictably the third and final goal song candidate (‘Whip’) sucked, ergo the mood after we scored our two goals was like it was a preseason game.  Of course, just using the word sucked will burn the ears of upper management who were apparently irate that the crowd decided to incorporate you suck into the Seven Nation Army goal song that’s probably going to win the final vote this week.  Especially since Whip and Righteous Smoke both stunk and got booed out of the building.  I didn’t really hear the boos last night, or much of any reaction to the goal song quite honestly but maybe I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve stopped caring enough to even listen for the crowd reaction.  What has become obvious over the last few days is the new ownership isn’t stopping at the goal song in terms of changing the atmosphere.

Also gone is Blur (Song 2), which was typically played after a Devils win for at least the last decade plus.  I didn’t notice last Saturday because I wasn’t at the game but I missed the ‘Woo-hoo!’ song after the final horn last night.  Not to mention the whole Devils Army theme of the last few seasons is also a thing of the past, which yeah was kind of corny but not nearly as much as many of the current forced chants from the Diablos in section 122 (‘Go Red Go’…really?).  It’s almost as if now that they own the team, ownership’s doing all they can to put their own stamp on it as fast as possible, irrespective to what the fans want or care about.  You wonder just how far they’re willing to go to tick off the current sth base.  There isn’t another sth base waiting to walk through the door.  Common sense states that you would want to observe your fans for a while before making what (to them) seems like sweeping changes to long-standing traditions.

In the humorous and annoying (at the same time) category, my seatmate was complaining that they no longer sold hot chocolate at the Mrs. Fields stand or the City Grill.  I like hot chocolate too so during the first intermission I looked around a little cause I vaguely remembered there being hot chocolate at the new Tim Horton’s stand outside of 225 (worth it to go there just for the Timbits – tiny Dunkin Donut-like munchkins).  Which there is…but you couldn’t get the hot chocolate there.  You had to get it at the City Grill outside of 230, even though it wasn’t on the menu there which confused me.  I went back and forth a couple of times before I realized you had to ask for it specifically at the City Grill outside 230.  Talk about customer service and advertising issues!  I did finally get some myself and it was quite good – 14 ounces for $2.50 isn’t a bad buy.  Especially considering I can just put it on my food and beverage card and not actually pay for it.   I also tried one of the dollar hot dogs for amusement, not expecting anything gourmet…but it wasn’t as terrible as it was a few years ago when they first started with the dollar dog promotion during certain games.  At least the magnetic schedule giveaway was nice, though the actual calendar giveaway won’t take place until late next month.  Just barely in time for 2014 I suppose.