http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAKO3R5UD3E

In a bizarre game at the Prudential Center, this Devil team that just refuses to go away quietly into the night somehow pulled another rabbit out of the hat against an equally desperate Caps team, gutting out a come-from-behind 2-1 win despite being down to eight healthy forwards by the end of the night.  Even during our cap fiascoes in 2010, I’ve never heard of a team being down to eight forwards by the end of a game aside from maybe a flu-related instance.  While I wouldn’t exactly recommend losing top players like Patrik Elias and Adam Henrique (along with Jacob Josefson) to injury during a game where you only dress eleven fowards to begin with, perhaps in a weird way the injuries united the team.

Certainly during a drab first period, it looked like it was going to be yet another long night.  Already sitting five points out of a playoff spot, tonight looked like it was going to be IT once and for all when the Devils allowed Alex Ovechkin to score his first even-strength goal in sixteen games in the first period, while the Blue Jackets got out to an early lead against an injury-riddled Blackhawks team starting its backup goaltender on top of missing big stars Johnathan Toews and Patrick Kane.  Overlooked at the time (certainly by me) was the fact the first period could have been even worse, after early penalties by Anton Volchenkov and Adam Larsson gave the Caps three plus straight power play minutes, including a nearly minute-long five-on-three.  Facing the league’s best PP with two defensemen in the box…what odds would you have put on our killing it off?  However, sterling PK work from the three-man unit of Henrique, Andy Greene and Mark Fayne prevented the Caps from even getting a shot on net.  Ovechkin’s goal came later in the period, but instead of making the game 2-0, it was still in reach at 1-0.

Scoring aside, the Devils had already suffered a devastating loss in the first period when the Caps’ Tom Wilson crushed Elias along the boards, and his head hit the stantion (a la Max Pacioretty with the contreversial Zdeno Chara hit a couple of years back).  Elias left the game with a suspected concussion, not to return.  Washington not only had the better of play in terms of scoring chances in the first period, but they came out physical – with Ovechkin hitting Larsson a wee bit late on his first shift and Henrique came to his defenseman’s defense…but only after d-partner Eric Gelinas took a pass and skated away.  It would be telling of our early play.  During the second period, Mikail Grabovski landed on goaltender Cory Schnieder, but again nothing was done to protect one of our key players.  While by all accounts Wilson’s hit wasn’t dirty, nothing happened to him either until Marek Zidlicky took a matching roughing penalty late in the second period.

Still, if the team didn’t come out as edgy as I would have liked they certainly showed intestinal fortitude over the game’s final forty minutes.  Although Jaromir Jagr missed a golden opportunity to tie the game by passing up an open chance in the slot, the Devils kept buzzing after an early (though futile) four-minute power play in the second period turned the tide.  Finally, at 12:21 of the second, the breakthrough came when Gelinas took a point shot that Tuomo Ruutu deflected past Caps goaltender Jaroslav Halak for the tying goal – his third as a Devil in fourteen games.  Therein lies the rub with Gelinas, he helps create offense but aside from that he was awful in his nearly thirteen minutes of icetime while fellow younster Larsson got shafted (again) after his early penalty, and only played a hair above ten minutes.  Thus, despite having seven defensemen – though Gelinas moved back to forward for a couple of shifts later on after all our injuries started – Greene got an insane 28:35 of icetime in a regulation finish, including over four minutes of PK and PP time each.

Greene wouldn’t be the only Devil taxed as first Henrique, then Josefson went down to injury by the start of the third period.  Even Damien Brunner had to miss a couple of shifts due to an equipment (skate) problem.  I’m sure there was more than one gallows humor joke made on the bench about how they suddenly had so much legroom.  Heroically, the 42-year old Jagr played 25:28 to lead all forwards and to use a DeBoerism, ‘they were hard minutes’.  Another guy that deserves praise is Schnieder himself – while I was down on him last month for falling off down the stretch, he responded big-time tonight to a desperate situation making at least three saves that were standing ovation quality including one of Devil-killer Jason Chimera on a breakaway towards the end of the first period, and sprawling saves on Marcus Johansson late in the second and on Grabovski midway through the third.

With Schnieder holding the fort, the Devils still needed to find a way to score before facing the dreaded shootout…preferably scoring before the end of regulation so that they wouldn’t give a team in front of them a point.  Enter Ryan Carter, who found himself in the right place at the right time as Zidlicky lifted a puck to the Devils centerman in the middle of FOUR Caps players, and Carter somehow beat Halak through the legs with just 4:54 remaining in the game.  Admittedly after the game, Carter forgot whether he was supposed to be playing center or wing on the play since not only lines but positions were all screwed up because of the injuries.  Not that it matters when you score a key goal like that.  While the Devils’ defense clamped down for the most part, Schnieder did have to make a highlight reel save on Johansson again late in the third to help preserve the hard-fought win.  Clearly the 15,000 plus at the arena still believed…the roar at the end of the game was probably the loudest I’ve heard the Rock all year.  Perhaps many of them even knew what I was about to find out postgame via a text from a friend before I could even check Twitter – that the Blackhawks had rallied for a dramatic late win over the Blue Jackets, pulling us to within three points of a playoff spot with five games remaining.

Not only was the win meaningful, but it was a bit inspiring to be honest.  After the Devils’ loss in Buffalo, Jagr made reference to the ‘one inch at a time’ speech from Al Pacino in the movie Any Given Sunday.  During the game with our injury total mounting, I was thinking about another scene in that same movie when all the quarterbacks started going down one by one.  As Derek well knows you can count on Jagr alternately for colorful quotes, and for telling it like it is in good times and bad.  A exhausted Jagr in the postgame gave great credit to his teammates:

Tom Gulitti ‏@TGfireandice  1h

Jagr: “That was a team win. Everybody gave everything we could…We had a short bench. That’s probably the toughest and best win we’ve had so far, the way I look at it…When we have to win, guys went down, we have a lot of new guys and we did it. I’m proud of our team tonight.”

While we may still be alive as a team, our roster is on life support at the moment with healthy bodies needed for a game in Carolina less than twenty-four hours later.  As coach Pete DeBoer said after the game half-kiddingly, ‘we’ll field a team’, he also admitted that the Devils gave themselves a chance to stay relevant.  Indeed they did – and with a chance to gain another two points tomorrow and put even more pressure on the Jackets, the games are just going to get bigger and bigger…if the Devils can somehow keep winning.  Which wasn’t going to be an easy task even before losing basically an entire top six line within a week between Elias, Henrique and Ryane Clowe.  DeBoer would not commit to a goaltender for tomorrow but at this point (despite the taxing schedule) you’d figure it’s Schnieder until the ship either sinks, or doesn’t sink.  Especially with how he played tonight and in his last four games as a whole.