Cory Schnieder, Martin Brodeur and Andy Greene during a recent loss to the Bruins. (NJ.com) Brodeur raised questions about the organization’s mindset earlier today

As the Devils sit on the verge of missing the playoffs for the third time in four seasons, everyone’s looking for answers as to how an organization that’s generally been first-rate under GM Lou Lamoriello – and just two years ago was in the Stanley Cup Finals – has now fallen on hard times.  Many (including me) trace it back to the staggering dual departures of Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk in back-to-back offseasons.  Let’s face it, they were the building blocks of the 2012 team for better and worse.  People can claim that run was a fluke, but those Devils were an elite team in the second half once they made some key additions (defenseman Marek Zidlicky, forward Alexei Ponikarovsky and the CBGB fourth line of playoff fame) and especially after getting top centerman Travis Zajac back late in the season.  With captain Parise’s departure that team never got a second chance to finish what they came oh-so-close to that spring.

However, goaltender Martin Brodeur who has seen and done it all with the Devils thinks another problem currently exists.  Talking with local media this afternoon, Brodeur suggested that mediocrity’s become acceptable in the Devils organization.

“The thing is, we used to be a team that didn’t hover over .500,” Brodeur said Wednesday afternoon. “That’s something only the last few years we’ve been content with being that.  Even the year we made it all the way (2011-12), all year it’s not like we gave ourselves a big cushion. We had to come back late to the middle of the season and we had to push to get to the playoffs.”

 “So that’s something that going forward (Lamoriello) has to make sure we get back to that for the organization to be more of an impact. That means having a solid regular season and a solid start to the regular season, no letdown and be a power house like some of the teams are.”

 “That’s what when you sit back right now and look at what might happen tonight (the Devils being official eliminated), you think about these things,” Brodeur said. “The last few years it’s almost like .500 is okay. Let’s get a few games and we’ll start rolling then. That’s an attitude we never had before. It’s been creeping up a little bit and it needs to be addressed.”

Granted, when I read these quotes I was tempted to pop off something to the effect of ‘sure we’ve embraced mediocrity – we played YOU over a clearly superior goaltender for half the season’.  Not to mention Brodeur clearly has an axe to grind with the organization given Lou’s trade for Cory Schnieder this offseason and coach Pete DeBoer‘s extended benchings of the legend from mid-January to the Olympic break and this month as the Devils have made what looks like a futile run for the final wild card spot.  It’s really easy to see hurt or bias in Marty’s quotes, particularly in the light of other things Marty has said (fair and unfair) throughout the season…but when you put all that aside, a hard truth still exists:

Marty’s absolutely correct.

While it’s hard for me to believe Lou himself has accepted mediocrity, the fact of the matter is DeBoer’s job has never seriously been on the line in the last two years despite stretches of hockey that haven’t been seen since the dark days of the team’s arrival in New Jersey.  Whereas the old Lou fired coaches Robbie Ftorek and Claude Julien when the team was in first place, DeBoer still has a job despite being well on their way to missing the playoffs two years in a row.  Nor have any of the veteran players been held seriously accountable for the losing during that time, even as many of them are vastly underperforming their career numbers.  Accountability only exists if you’re under 25 years old here.  Especially when it’s come to Brodeur himself, when he’s continually allowed to be bigger than the team and not only dictate playing time (till recently) but also say whatever he wants and never get called on the carpet for it.

Part of that goes back to the head coach, who in my mind is the biggest culprit of this ‘mediocrity is okay’ mindset.  Granted, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I’ve wanted Pete to stay over the last two years myself.  Despite my problems with his double-standard (a quick trigger finger on the younger players, an unlimited leash for almost every vet) I think tactically his system can work with the right players and let’s face it the talent level has been affected by many factors that have nothing to do with Pete or Lou – specifically ownership, along with the aformentioned Parise and Kovy departures.  Talent drain or no talent drain though, let’s face it…most of Pete’s press conferences after we lose emphasize effort over results.  Whether it’s ‘we played a tough team in an tough building’, or ‘we ran into a hot goalie tonight’, or ‘we just couldn’t get the bounces’, very rarely will Pete take the team to task publicly.  Or hold them accountable for losing.

While you can’t crack the whip all the time and it’s okay to talk about effort once in a while, at some point it’s become eerily reminiscent of the Rich Kotite New York Jets era…where it was okay if ‘we try-hed ha-wd’.  Granted, it was another time with another team but let’s face it – you would never hear Jacques Lemaire, Pat Burns or even Larry Robinson consistently give the team props for trying.  If you fancy yourself a top flight organization, it’s not enough just to give effort.  Plenty of teams in the NHL give effort, many of them have jumped up and bit us in the fanny this year as we continually lose to teams below us in the standings.  It’s this usually cool-headed demeanor that’s the reason Pete hasn’t lost the locker room yet, but it’s also a big reason we’ve remained stuck in neutral for two years, with many of the same problems that plagued Pete in Florida (inability to develop younger players, problems scoring and holding leads).

Ironically it was just a few hours before Marty’s comments today that Pete did blow his stack for a rare time in practice and let loose a stream of four-letter words about how the team wasn’t paying enough attention to detail offensively.  Too little too late?  Or indiciative of trying to light a fire under a team that’s lost hope now that the playoff push got put on ice Monday night?  After Karri Ramo put up the ‘best goaltending performance I’ve seen ever in the NHL’, according to Jaromir Jagr.  It’s easy to see why Ramo was so good when you consider our best scoring chances were coming from pluggers like Ryan Carter and Steve Bernier.  Either way, clearly things have come to a head in Newark and this offseason will be very interesting.