Let’s face it, the state of area hockey as a whole is laughably bad, no matter which corner of the local triangle you want to look at.  In one corner, you have the Isles who have been buried in last place for weeks with a nine-million game losing streak before finally jolting to life in San Jose last night and winning a shootout.  Derek can give you chapter and verse on the Rangers, where I’m sure by now someone’ll be inspired to put up a billboard with a grinning John Tortorella ‘Miss me yet?’ sign (a la a similar one involving former President Bush some years back).  And then you have the one step forward, two steps back Devils who continue to find ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Last night’s 5-4 meltdown in Columbus was at best the second most annoying loss of the season, only behind an even bigger disaster in Alberta against the Oilers early in the season.  In some ways last night was even more annoying though, considering what’s on the line for a Devils team that is only teetering on the precipice of the playoffs due to a bad Metro division.  In many seasons our 12-14-6 record would have us in more serious danger than it currently does, as even now we sit just two points back of the automatic third playoff spot in the division.  And you would have figured Saturday’s wild OT win over the Rangers would actually give the Devils a tiny bit of sustained momentum.  However, this team is not only allergic to winning streaks but handing prosperity as a whole.

Quick trivia question…when’s the last time the Devils got a lead and held it the entire game?  Try November 10 against Nashville, our laughingly easy 5-0 win over third-string goalie Carter Hutton.  Unfortunately that game’s been the exception rather than the norm in both aspects of actually holding a lead and beating a backup goaltender.  Lately teams are playing their backups against us with increasing frequency and why not, given some of the garbage netminders we’ve lost to this year.  Although last night Columbus didn’t have a choice but to play the immortal Curtis McIlhenney (last seen around here dashing the Devils’ remarkable ’10-11 playoff run during his quick cup of coffee in Ottawa!) with Sergei Bobrovsky out due to injury.

And yet it seemed as if last night would be another Hutton game early on when Travis Zajac scored just thirty-two seconds into the game and goals from Michael Ryder and Damien Brunner helped us build a 3-1 lead early in the second period.  Silly me, I actually thought last night would not be one of those disaster games we see so often from the Devils, and that we’d take advantage of a team that had a couple of key injuries and played a tough game in Pittsburgh the night before.  It took a mere 49 seconds for the combo of Brandon Dubinsky and Cam Atkinson to make the Devils’ lead dissapear, like the proverbial magician with a rabbit.

Our anatomy of a blown lead begins on goal #2, with Adam Henrique (who’s been playing horrendous really since the lockout) getting whipped clean on a faceoff, leading to the sequence where Martin Brodeur flops around like a fish after an initial point shot and Dubinsky rumbles in to clean up the garbage.  That same line on the same shift wound up beating the Zajac-Jagr at their own cycling game to score the tying goal when Dubinsky found Atkinson with a quick feed from behind the net, and Atkinson beat Brodeur shortside up high.  Columbus’s dynamic duo got some more help on the tying goal from Anton Volchenkov who blew a tire for no apparent reason (trying to draw a penalty?), then managed to hurt his neck on the boards and unconscionably was allowed to come back into the game, where he’d play a critical role on the Blue Jackets’ winning goal.  More on that later though.

Somehow on the very first shift of the third period, the Devils allowed a two-on-one break with Brodeur scooting way out of position on the initial Dubinsky shot, allowing Matt Calvert to put the rebound into an open net.  To say this wasn’t Brodeur’s night was an understatement, but really Marty, Pete and GM Lou Lamoriello need to recognize once and for all that this needs to be Cory Schnieder‘s team.  I don’t care that the offense doesn’t score for him, let them freaking learn.  Schnieder, even after two losses last week still has a 1.87 GAA and .920 save percentage while Brodeur’s splits have dropped way below that to 2.44 and an .898 save percentage.  And yet it was Brodeur, not Schnieder who got the non back-to-back game in Columbus last night.

I understand the flimsy reasoning that Marty won his last game, Cory lost his last two and didn’t play particularly well in Columbus early in the year but come on…Cory’s been benched time and again after good performances.  There’s clearly not only a double standard which I expected, but an extremely weighted double standard.  Marty going into last night had allowed seventeen goals in his last six games.  Marty deserved to have every chance to lose the job when he was playing as well as Cory last month but now that’s over with.  Now with the team in jeopardy of missing the playoffs and forefiting a top ten pick, the best guy has to play and if that means Marty sits seven out of ten games, so be it.

Not that Marty was the only problem, or playing him was the only bad coaching decision by Pete last night.  After Brunner(!) tied the game shockingly scoring his second goal of the night after being in witness protection the last several weeks, DeBoer made a cardinal mistake by allowing our de facto fourth line (with Steve Bernier subbing for Cam Janssen) to be on the ice in the final two minutes of a tie game and they got hemmed in their zone by the Ryan Johansen-Nick Foligno line, with Tim Sestito turning into a pumpkin – shocker – and getting outmuscled on the boards before Foligno scored with his skate when Johansen’s shot went off him into the net.  Volchenkov was in the vicinity but somehow missed both Foligno and the puck, admitting after the game his neck was an issue.  Meanwhile Brodeur was whining that Foligno interfered with him moments earlier but I’m sorry dude, you had plenty of time to reset…at least several seconds.  As even Pete said that’s not why we lost.

No, why we lost is your idiotic decisions (starting with not calling a timeout once the Jackets tied the game bang-bang), this organization’s over-deference to Marty and sloppy play leading to our usual recipe for a blown lead.  In other words, just another day at the office for a DeBoer-coached team.