Goaltenders Martin Brodeur and Henrik Lundqvist shaking hands after the Devils’ disasterous Winter Classic defeat

Honestly, the less time I spend recapping the ’13-14 Devils season the better.  There weren’t many things to take pride in this season…one of them was the play of legend Jaromir Jagr, who turned back the clock with a virtuoso performance (24 goals and 64 points in 80 games with a +15).  Jagr’s presence helped linemate Travis Zajac find some semblance of his offensive game back, not to where it was three years ago but still his 17 goals and 45 points were at least a step back in the right direction.  After a slow start following his new six-year deal in the offseason, Adam Henrique scored 25 goals and currently has the team lead.  On defense, our brightest star was Andy Greene who put up 32 points and averaged over twenty-four minutes a game playing as the #1 guy, finally getting some notice after unceremoniously being overlooked for the US hockey team.  Marek Zidlicky also deserves special notice with 40 points and 10 goals, both of which led the defense.  And Jon Merrill shot up the depth chart in his first full season after three years at the university of Michigan and a short apprenticeship in the AHL, playing in all situations.   Another bright spot was the play of ballyhooed acquisition Cory Schnieder, who despite no goal support and neverending contreversy surrounding the presence of Martin Brodeur, managed in the end to put up his usual stellar numbers with a 1.97 GAA and .921 save percentage in 43 games, a touch more than he’s played in the past but still not enough for this team to fully benefit going forward.  Our nine OT wins and seemingly neverending string of close games provided both excitement and angst.

For the most part, that’s where the positives end as ultimately the ’13-14 season will be remembered as a series of almosts and what ifs.  Here, I’ll provide one last look back at the biggest lowlights of the season:

1. October 7 – Oilers 5, Devils 4 in Edmonton…while I could have put the 0-4-3 start as a whole in this spot, the Oiler game was especially troubling.  Losing the season opener in Pittsburgh wasn’t particuarly alarming, other than being shut out by playoff goat Marc-Andre Fleury.  Losing the home opener against the Isles the next night was more annoying than anything else, considering it came in a shootout (and the 0-6 there portended bad things to come).  However it was this game in particular that perfectly illustrated all the ills that would befall this team in the weeks and months to come.  When you lose a 3-0 lead in the third period that’s bad enough, when you lose it to a perennial second-division team that’s worse, but when you come back to tie the game in the final minute then lose in a shootout to the immortal Jason LaBarbera that’s just the icing on a turd cake.  Losing to a backup goaltender proved to be another alarming trend – on the way to twenty such defeats – along with bad goaltending from Brodeur, blowing huge leads and losing a shootout.  All those trends cropped up in a single game.

2. November 27 – Hurricanes 4, Devils 3 in Newark…again I could have put a multi-game stretch in this slot but wanted to focus on something specific.  After the Devils had their best stretch of the season winning five of six and beating some tough teams (including Pittsburgh, Anaheim, LA and the Rangers), they lost a tough game in San Jose, okay no biggie.  Losing to the Jets at home though basically canceled out all the good that came from our 2-1 West Coast swing two nights later but it wasn’t till the Canes game just before Thanksgiving that eyebrows were really raised when Brodeur started his third consecutive game coming off of two losses, with Schnieder having his best peformance of the season in the win out in Los Angeles.  Despite that game, Schnieder would sit the next three games – all losses.  Brodeur got Monday’s game against the Jets less than 48 hours after finishing on the West Coast because he ‘wanted it’, according to coach Pete DeBoer.   Evidently that applied for Wednesday’s game too where bad Brodeur goaltending helped doom the team to a 4-3 loss and sparked Schnieder’s ‘Groundhog Day’ quote, the only time all year he showed public frustration with how he was being used.

3. December 10 – Columbus 5, Devils 4 in Columbus…again multiple trends were on display here.  Lose to a backup goalie?  Check (Curtis McIlhenney).  Blow a big lead?  Check – from 3-1 up in the middle of the second period the Devils blew the game, not even getting a point in Nationwide Arena when Nick Foligno scored the tie-breaking goal with barely a minute and a half left in regulation, a brutal loss that would wind up affecting their playoff chances.  More bad Brodeur goaltending?  Check.  And at that point Columbus was without key players like Nathan Horton, Marian Gaborik and Vezina winner Sergei Bobrovsky.  Not beating the Jackets then proved to be costly later.

4. January 26 – Rangers 7, Devils 3 at Yankee Stadium…how can I not include this game?  At the time of the Stadium Series classic, the Devils and Rangers were neck-and-neck in the playoff race.  Brodeur got the start here too, and things looked good for a time as the Devils jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the first period.  However, the rest of the game looked like Rocky vs. Mr. T (the first fight) in Rocky III where the Rangers just kicked the crap out of us the rest of the afternoon.  After six goals went past Marty in just two periods, finally he was pulled – and would not start another game until after the Olympic break – but things didn’t get any better in the third as Derek Stepan‘s penalty shot goal on Schnieder completed the rout.  While the Rangers kept rolling after that game, the Devils went into a funk as evidenced by a desultory loss in St. Louis two nights later folowed by #5 on my list:

5. January 30 – February 2: Three straight OT games, three straight blown leads in the final two minutes.  A truly staggering stretch that wound up costing us more psychologically than anything else since we actually won the first game in Dallas and got loser points in the other two.  However, giving up a goal to Tyler Seguin with 52 seconds left up 2-1 set a bad trend that would continue throughout the week.  In Nashville the next night it was David Legwand who scored the tying goal from 2-1 down with just 11 seconds left, en route to a Predators win in OT.  And just when you thought it couldn’t possibly happen again, P.A. Parenteau scored as we blew a 1-0 lead with 1:47 left in regulation and the goalie pulled when coach Patrick Roy made one of his many brilliant moves this season, pulling his goalie insanely early when his team had our fourth line pinned in its own zone.  Of course we lost in OT again when Ryan O’Reilly scored on a power play.  All three games came with Schnieder in net, which didn’t particularly help his W/L record.

6. March 14 – Panthers 5, Devils 3…Perhaps the most crushing blow of all this season, as the Devils had come out of the Olympic break in their second (and last) true hot streak of the season winning five of seven.  Despite some defensive hiccups and having the goaltending situation get messy again with Marty and Cory essentially splitting starts after the break, the Devils were on their way to making a real run.  Especially with a favorable schedule down the stretch as we’ve been told it was for months.  However the Devils blew it big-time in Sunrise against another non-playoff team who’d liquidated at the deadline, getting out to a 3-1 second period lead and again blowing it, with this time Schnieder being the culprit in net.  That defeat started a 2-4-2 stretch (including a five-game homestand mind you!) which effectively doomed the Devils’ chances at late April hockey.

7. April 7 – Flames 1, Devils 0…Our last gasp came with a 3-0-3 stretch coming into this game, and two straight wins over the Capitals and Hurricanes (effectively wiping out both from our rear-view mirror).  Despite shootout losses to the Isles and Sabres during that streak, and a messy win over the Panthers where Brodeur was pulled after a 3-0 lead turned into a 4-3 game, the Devils still had an opportunity to get within one point of the Blue Jackets for the final spot with another win and keep the pressure on.  Alas, the ever-elusive three-game winning streak – only one such all season – once again failed to materialize as the immortal Karri Ramo shut us out with Mark Giordano‘s early third-period goal providing all the offense the Flames needed against the hard-luck Schnieder.  Kind of a fitting end for our season, considering the team’s 26th ranked offense with 84 goals scored in Schenider’s 43 starts.