With the noose tightening around the Devils’ necks following a disgraceful no-show in Detroit on Friday night, last night’s game against the Canes was an absolute must-win.  Losing would have all but eliminated the Devils, putting them five points behind the Rangers with a game in hand for the last division spot and four points behind the Wings (with two in hand for Detroit) for the final wild card spot.  Showing urgency – particularly in the early part of the second period – the Devils jumped out to a 4-1 lead and got starting Cane goaltender Anton Khudobin pulled.  As has been the case so many times with this team under Pete DeBoer though, they inexplicably lost the lead before the newest Devil (Tuomo Ruutu) dramatically rescued his team from the abyss with a storybook ending.  New Jersey’s 5-4 win wasn’t artistic, but it was critical – keeping us within shouting distance pending other teams’ games in hand.

Even with our typical defensive foibles late in the game, at least I felt better after last night’s game than I did after Friday’s fiasco in Detroit (a 7-4 loss which wasn’t even that close), the first time Cory Schnieder had ever given up as many as seven goals in the NHL.  With all the recent Martin Brodeur-created publicly contreversy around the goaltending situation it was an ill-timed blow up for Schnieder, who hasn’t found his groove since the break yet.  Granted, he didn’t get much help from his team, who totally stunk the joint out for 55 of the 60 minutes and punted away any good that was accomplished in Tuesday’s emotional home victory.  Still, between the Devils’ inconsistencies and MB30’s all-too-public crying these days I was pretty much tired of everything and everybody these days.  Of the starting lineup yesterday, Jaromir Jagr was the only one who deserved – and got – my applause, which included MB30.  Normally I’ll go out of my way to stand up and clap for MB30 and stay up until the anthem, but last night I only stood up for our other HOF’er to be, then sat back down till the anthem.

Given my antagonistic mood, the Devils needed to score early to get me into the game, which they did at 4:25 with Ruutu figuring in prominently in this goal – threading the needle past Khudobin and defenseman Jay Harrison to find Travis Zajac wide open for a his eleventh goal of the season…a tap-in that even Zajac (who seemingly invents ways to miss open nets) couldn’t help but put in unless there was a hole in the ice, I joked during the game.  Despite being outshot 10-6 in the first period, it was actually the Devils who had the better chances – but Khudobin stopped Ryane Clowe on a breakaway, made a brilliant save on a Steve Bernier deflection and another good one on a Patrik Elias attempt off a two-on-one.  Early in the second period we peppered Khudobin in a period where we wound up with seventeen shots total but as tends to be the case when one team gets chances and fails to take advantage, the other team invaraibly makes them pay.  Jeff Skinner‘s game-tying goal at 6:21 was one of those ‘fluke by design’ plays which started when Andrej Sekera missed the net with a shot, only for it to bounce right to Skinner, who put the puck in off Mark Fayne‘s elbow.

Soon after, the Devils’ offensive avalanche finally started to fall on the Canes, when our PP broke the deadlock at 8:34 after Damien Brunner put home a backhanded rebound from a Marek Zidlicky shot for his tenth goal of the season.  Just twenty-three seconds later the Devils doubled their lead when Clowe and Adam Henrique got behind the Canes’ defense with Clowe getting the puck to Henrique, who beat Khudobin with a slick backhander top-shelf.  It can’t be overstated how hot Henrique’s been since the break, with nine goals, two assists and a +7 in six games since the Olympics.  While Henrique’s tear has bumped his goal total to twenty-three for the season, he was having a very middling start before the break (14 G, 13 A and a -1 in 59 games) but thankfully someone told him it’s May 2012 again.  While Henrique’s first goal last night extended his goal-scoring streak to a team record-tying six games in a row, his second goal seemingly put the game away when Elias left a nice drop pass that Henrique fired home through a screen shorthanded at 12:51, making the game 4-1 and prompting the Canes to put in the ghost of Cam Ward.

Ward’s had a rough go of it aside from a couple of good seasons, and his stellar playoff runs in ’06 and ’09 (mostly built off our backs).  So much so he’s actually been replaced by Khudobin as the starter in Carolina for the moment.  With him in the game now and a huge lead, I admit it I got cocky and screamed something to the effect of, ‘Ward, you suck…it’s mop-up time for you buddy!’  I should have known better, especially given this team.  While I still don’t believe Stan Fischler‘s axiom about a three-goal lead being the worst in hockey, somehow it winds up being true all the time with this team.  Plus I forgot we were still on the PK, and the Canes got back the goal they gave away shorthanded when Harrison beat Brodeur with an unscreened wrister thirty-three seconds later.  Though the game remained 4-2 through the second intermission, I still had an uneasy feeling given our suddenly leaky defense, and the fact MB30 wasn’t exactly living up to his public talk.  Early in the third, my worst fears started to be realized at 4:41 when Brunner literally threw away a power play chance, turning around and making a blind pass across the point that was intercepted for a shorthanded chance by Nathan Gerbe that the diminutive ex-Sabre put home, beating Brodeur as if this was a shootout.  Even that goal was nothing compared to the Canes’ tying marker, a great solo effort by Alex Semin combined with horrid efforts from Bryce Salvador ‘defending’ him and MB30 in stopping the puck at 12:39.  Although I knew the Canes were tying the game when it got to 4-3, it was at this point I was broken and just hoped the Canes would get this over with before another hideous shootout.

Almost out of nowhere, the Devils re-took the lead just fifty-one seconds later when a Zidlicky shot rebounded to Ruutu, who beat his old teammate Ward through traffic.  At this point I was more bemused than anything, reminding me of the 8-5 game against the Rangers in ’09 where I was so annoyed my reaction was more a sigh of relief and just hoping the roof wouldn’t fall in again.  Despite some hairy moments late, there was no second reprieve for Carolina last night and the Devils escaped…barely.  After the game, I went up to the goal bar briefly to take this picture of the Hockey Night Live crew doing a rare road trip, prompting a joke from Al Trautwig about how they were at the Prudential Center, ‘the house Dano built’.  If it wasn’t a good game on the whole, it was certainly a meaningful one for Ruutu, whose two-point effort was praised in the postgame by coach DeBoer:

“It was a great game for him,” Devils coach Pete DeBoer said. “With what he’s gone through – his wife and family are back in Carolina and she’s expecting a baby – he’s got a lot going on with all the travel’s he’s done. We wouldn’t have won tonight without him, so it was an exceptional effort.”

New guy heroics aside, the Devils are going to have to clean up their mistakes defensively if they’re going to go on any kind of a winning streak to save their season.  It’s easy enough to scapegoat Eric Gelinas (who only played one PP shift in the third period) and the kids didn’t look great at times, but it’s not as easy to explain away the various foibles by our veterans, or the lack of backchecking from the forwards lately.  It seems obvious we’ve been sacrificing defense for offense since the break, but if we’re going to do that then the goaltenders need to be on their game.  And neither Cory or MB30 were on their games the last two nights, although as has been the case this season the MB30 voodoo magic came through again, as MB30’s gone to 3-0 since the break while Cory’s at 1-2, and seemingly MB30’ll get his wish and play Tuesday and next weekend going into the stretch drive.  Our upcoming three-game road trip is critical, especially Tuesday’s game against the Flyers, who we’re chasing for one of the automatic division playoff spots.  After our trip to Florida to play the Panthers and Lightning next weekend, the Devils only leave the tri-state area twice the rest of the season, for one-game trips to Ottawa and Carolina in April.  Hopefully there’ll still be something to play for by then.