Martin Havlat, Mike Cammalleri and Patrik Elias celebrate a goal, while rookie Damon Severson attempts to look nonchalant (TSN.ca)

Despite the Devils’ Opening Night win on Thursday I was prepared for more angst last night.  After all, our trips to Sunrise the last couple years have both led to soul-crushing defeats.  Even in 2012 when we beat the Panthers in the playoffs we played six nip-and-tuck games down there between the regular season and postseason.  Much to my relief however, last night was a extremely rare ‘get ahead and stay ahead’ game as the Devils rode five goals in the first twenty-three minutes to an easy 5-1 win in front of a dissapointing crowd of just over 11,000 for the Panthers’ home opener.  Once again it was a balanced scoring attack as five different players scored, with eleven different Devils putting up at least a point.  While he didn’t need to do much early, Cory Schnieder came up with plenty of strong saves to keep the Panthers at bay and finally get a win over former teammate Roberto Luongo (after three straight losses to Luuu last year).

Other than the fact the Devils took an unseemly amoung of penalties – eight (including five by the fourth line alone), there wasn’t much on the negative side to take out of this game.  Special teams were much better than they were in Philly with the Devils scoring twice on the power play in the first period and killing off seven of those eight penalties, despite many of them occuring in rapid-fire succession between the end of the second period and start of the third.  Cory was certainly better in Florida than he was Thursday night in getting his second win…amazingly he didn’t get his second win last year until just before Thanksgiving, in his tenth game.  Of course part of the reason for that was the team only scored 12 goals in his first 10 games last year, while they’ve already scored 11 in his two starts this year.  You really can’t make this stuff up.

Once again, the young defense was impressive, justifying Pete DeBoer’s decisions on the blueline to this point.  Rookie sensation Damon Severson put up his first NHL points with a goal off a seeing-eye wrister late in the first period, an assist and a +2 last night in nearly nineteen minutes, playing 3:29 on the PP and 3:48 shorthanded.  Jon Merrill logged 20+ minutes of icetime for the second straight game (22:11 last night) with an assist and a +1.  And of course Eric Gelinas was a key cog for the offense getting assists on the first two goals of the night, ironically both off wrist shots and not his patented bomb from the point.  Also, the vets pulled their weight last night as well with Andy Greene and Bryce Salvador logging over twenty minutes of shorthanded time between them last night with the late penalty-fest.

Up front, again the top three lines were all involved with Martin Havlat scoring his first as a Devil off a tip from a Gelinas wrister at 8:46 of the first, Mike Cammalleri getting a piece of Marek Zidlicky’s point bomb on the power play for his third goal of the year at 13:13 and Ryane Clowe scoring off a rebound at 2:59 of the second for the Devils’ fifth goal.  Even fourth-liner Tuomo Ruutu tipped home the first goal of the game at 2:23 off another Gelinas wrister – but the fourth line wound up being a net negative between Ruutu’s two penalties, recent signee Jordin Tootoo’s two penalties and Stephen Gionta adding one for good measure.  It really was inexcusable and the only thing that kept me from staying relaxed in the final two periods of this game when the Devils got out to a lead that even they probably would not blow.  Still you couldn’t ask much more from last night’s game.  I’ll take any game where you can score five in twenty-three minutes and chase Roberto Luongo from the net…why Luongo even came out to start the second was puzzling after already being 0-4 down, but after the quick early fifth goal in the second he was finally given the mercy pull for Al Montoya.

Our only potential issue at the moment – which I don’t even want to address at 2-0 with the team looking impressive – is the Adam Larsson thing, which continues to simmer beneath the surface with HNIC talking head Damien Cox saying the Larsson camp wasn’t happy about his benching but weren’t demanding a trade – yet.  While I’ve been critical of the organization’s handling of Larsson at times I really don’t want to hear this nonsense when the team’s looked as impressive as it has through the first two games.  At some point it just comes off as selfish.  I hope somewhere Larsson was listening to or heard about what Ken Daneyko said on the broadcast last night, about how he was in and out of the lineup his first few years as well and had similar angst.  All that happened was Daneyko wound up being the longest-tenured Devil in history.  Quite honestly these other guys are proving the staff right at the moment, that they all deserve to play.  Larsson will get his chance one way or another down the road (whether it’s here or somewhere else), he just needs to stop making waves while things are otherwise going well for the team.

While the 2-0 start is nice, as coach DeBoer was quick to point out we started off great two years ago as well and then flamed out after that, so a good start isn’t the be-all and end-all, although it certainly beats the alternative (last year’s 0-4-3).  And the competition level only goes up from here with our next game in Tampa against a legit contender.   It would be nice to get a three-game winning streak however, since we had one all of last year and none the last two-thirds of the lockout season.  I don’t expect any changes on D or in net two days from now, but maybe one of the fourth liners will sit after the penalty-fest last night and someone else will get a chance up front.