In actuality, last night’s crowd of 16,592 (apparently the new sellout number) got an 18-by-24 inch size Andy Greene poster in the first post-Christmas game of the season…it was the game itself that was the lump of coal, as the Devils lost yet another shootout after a 1-1 tie that was extremely misleading.  Columbus dominated most of the game in terms of effort and creating chances, and only a turn-the-clock back performance from Martin Brodeur kept the game from being 5-1 or 6-1.  Especially in the first period where the defense was as bad as I’ve seen it since the John MacLean era error.  At times it was hard to tell whether they were lazy or just laughably inept.  Any way you slice it, having that kind of effort after a long break following an absolute blow-up in Chicago on Monday night is not a good sign.

Columbus’s goal was a fitting prism of everything that’s wrong with this team.  Of course it was the two ex-Rangers (Brandon Dubinsky and Artem Anisimov) that were key in the goal with Anisimov finding Cam Atkinson with a long pass to crank up the breakout.  Atkinson blew by Greene and found Dubinsky wide open in front of the net.  Amazingly, Brodeur made the save.  However, despite no fewer than four(!) Devils in the vicinity of the rebound somehow nobody saw the puck and eventually Anisimov located the rebound and put it past Brodeur to give Columbus what looked like the first of many goals on the night.  Being outshot 8-5 doesn’t do justice to how bad the period was.  In the first minute and a half we got a couple of weak shots on goal, in the last minute we finally had a good shift and got three on net.  In between it was a total black hole for seventeen minutes, and most of Columbus’s chances were great ones too.

For the longest time it seemed as if all Marty would be able to do is keep a terminal patient alive longer than they should have been.  If it wasn’t for the fact the rest of the game was such a trainwreck, his performance would have been a sight to see though.  Check out NHL.com’s highlights of some of his saves, particularly one on Mark Letestu in the first period on a virtual two-on-zero.  Or stonewalling that same player when he was able to walk in one-on-one around the defense.  Or stopping Dubinsky on yet another first-period breakaway and Atkinson on a second-period breakaway.  You get the picture.  It wasn’t much better in the second period either, as the Jackets outshot us 10-4.  Really the highlight of the first two periods was in the second intermission when some poor guy literally came within inches of winning the score-O competition and a new car.  After missing his first shot from the blueline, he hit his next one, then fired it in from center ice right down the middle and then went to the other blueline for the money shot trying to hit a tiny hole in a net barrier barely big enough to squeeze a puck in.  And his shot…wound up right smack next to the hole.

Columbus must have felt like Brodeur had that kind of barrier on the net for much of the night, though it didn’t look like the Devils were much threat to score against the immortal Curtis McElhinney, who really didn’t have much to do all night other than one nice glove save on Jaromir Jagr early in the second period.  A nearly minute-long five-on-three early in the third period looked like it would finally provide the finishing blow for this game but the Devils killed it off with some inspired defense (finally), including a diving clear from Adam Henrique.  For the third period it seemed as if Henrique turned back the clock to 2012 as it would be he that converted a rebound off a Marek Zidlicky shot at 5:45 of the third to tie the game.  Henrique literally was falling to the ice as he put the puck in the net for his seventh of the season.  After an initial spurt following the goal though, the Devils resumed going through the motions for most of the night.  Even when they finally dragged the game into overtime, they showed little resolve not even recording a single shot in the five-minute four-on-four.

Of course the game reached its predictable conclusion in the shootout but not without some contreversy as Pete DeBoer left Reid Boucher on the bench despite the fact Boucher has the only shootout goal scored by a Devil all season.  When asked after the game, DeBoer claimed it was because Boucher was cold from being benched in the third period and sarcastically smirked about it as if he was Bill Parcells.  Ironically one of the guys who did go in the shootout was Ryane Clowe, who was playing his first game in ten weeks.  Although he cited Clowe’s career record in the shootout he left the part out of the equation where Clowe was miserable in his first two shootout attempts this year and was again last night.  It was nice to get him back in the lineup for his physicality, but let’s face it he just is not the same offensive player he was three years ago when he was scoring far more frequently in both regulation and the shootout.  Not that it really would have mattered if Boucher shot or not, even if he’d scored it’s not like anyone else on this team looks like they’re capable of scoring in the skills competition.  Brodeur tried to give the team a chance, stopping the first two before Atkinson beat him – mercifully ending the game.

Perhaps what’s more interesting than the Devils’ play on the ice right now is the machinations off the ice with some injured guys coming back, including the expected return of captain Bryce Salvador tonight.  Salvador’s return probably spells the end for Mark Fayne, who was dreadful last night and really didn’t take advantage of his chance to return to the starting lineup over the last few weeks as much as I’d hoped.  DeBoer continues to screw around with the young players, either playing them too much (Jon Merrill gets treated like Chris Pronger, which incidentally is the same mistake Pete made with Adam Larsson his rookie year too) or not at all.  While Boucher deserved his benching for two bad turnovers, having a 20-year old kid play a shade over ten minutes a night is not doing him or the team any good here.  Although I do get tired of Jacob Josefson‘s lack of offense he never really got a fair chance to redeem his bad season last year after a good preseason in September, and having former first-rounders like him and Mattias Tedenby play seven minutes a night or get benched is what we have to look forward to with Boucher sadly.  And it’s imperative we do not screw up Boucher’s development.  He and current team USA player Stefan Matteau are the only potential top six/nine forwards in the pipeline at the moment.

Tonight’s game on Long Island is not only huge for the team as a whole, but for Cory Schnieder individually.  A lack of goal support and wins seems to have broken him, and he’s been miserable this month allowing 3+ goals in every game including the Chicago meltdown where he gave up two gag-worthy goals.  Worse, he sounded defeated after the game when referencing one of the goals that went off his glove his quote was, ‘that’s the kind of stuff that’s been happening to me all season’.  It doesn’t help when the guy gets put out there every start seemingly against an upper-echelon playoff team, frequently without goal support and asked more or less to be perfect.  Nor does it help when you get benched three straight games after your best performance of the season.  Still, he has to play better.  Sadly this game might not do him any favors since we invariably allow one or two Michael Grabner breakaways a night, and Cory’s allergic to stopping any kind of breakaway so that’d put us a couple of goals behind the eight-ball before starting.  Given everything that’s on the line for him and the team tonight though, they have to find a way to win.  Even if it’s another of these firewagon 4-3 games we usually seem to play against them.