Today, the clock officially started on Martin Brodeur’s Hall Of Fame eligibility (and first-ballot induction) in 2018, as the long-time Devil goaltender officially announced his retirement as a player earlier this afternoon, ending a career that can only be described as legendary with 691 wins, 125 shutouts, three Stanley Cups and one distinctive hybrid style of goaltending that probably will never be duplicated.  While Brodeur will remain in St. Louis for the rest of the season and work as an assistant GM to Doug Armstrong, all parties have indicated that Marty will soon be back in the Devils’ organization after this year and work in their front office.

Everyone knew this day was coming eventually, honestly to me emotionally the home finale last year truly felt like the end of an era, even if it wasn’t quite the end of Marty’s career.  Whatever you may think of Marty going to St. Louis for a handful of games after two decades of wearing one uniform, as the man himself said he’ll always be a Devil and for today I’ll leave it at that, cause today should be more about celebrating his career.  In a way, it was fitting to me that the news of the Continental Airlines Arena closing came the same day Marty took a leave of absence from the Blues to ponder his future – with Brian Elliott healthy for them, there was no place for Marty on their roster so today’s announcement seemed inevitable from that day.  Marty and the building he called home where he won his three Stanley Cups in were both intertwined and symbolic of an era of Devils hockey that now seems to be gone for good.

Plain and simple, a list of the Devils’ greatest moments in history will almost all involve Marty somehow.  And vice-versa, a list of Marty’s greatest moments is pretty much a list of the Devils’ greatest moments.  For a franchise that has only been around 33 years, the fact that Marty played twenty of them (well twenty-one if you count his brief spell in ’91-92 as a raw newcomer), and all as a big part of the franchise’s greatest successes ties Marty to the Devils in a way few athletes – even fellow legends – are tied to their teams.  Whether on TV or live I’ve seen many of Marty’s greatest moments.  Even deciding what YouTube I should use for this blog was hard.  Do I go with highlighting a team accomplishment such as winning the 1995 and 2003 Cups at home, or an individual achievement like setting the NHL record for wins, or even the fantastic goal he scored in the playoffs in 1997 against his boyhood team the Montreal Canadiens?  Not to mention the countless number of great saves there are to choose from.

Actually at first I was going to post video from his Devil finale last year, but figured in the end that would be too melancholy so I picked scoring the goal against Montreal with an excited Doc Emrick and Chico Resch on the call.  As great as Marty was as a goaltender, you could compile a list of best saves for anyone and compare anyone’s great saves (one of my personal faves wasn’t available on YouTube, when Marty stopped Jaromir Jagr and Mario Lemieux back-to-back at their peak on a clip that used to be played during Devils highlights on MSG)…but what truly set Marty apart was not only the fact he was a hybrid of the butterfly and stand-up styles of goaltending, but that he could play the puck well enough to where the trapezoid was put in specifically because of his skill.   Mostly his great puckhandling led to breakouts that helped the offense and prevented wear and tear on his defense, but on occasion Marty would score his own goal…though of the three career goals he’s credited with – yet another record he holds – this highlight in 1997 was the only one he actually physically put into the net.

I thought of doing a memories list the way I did with the CAA, but really there are too many to count when it comes to Marty’s career.  I could bother to figure out the number of Brodeur wins I’ve attended but my guesstimate is that I’ve been to at least a hundred of Marty’s 691 career wins and maybe twelve-fifteen shutouts, not counting playoff stats of course.  Perhaps during the next storm or faux storm I’ll figure out the totals (since I keep almost all my ticket stubs).  Obviously some stand out…one of the first games I went to I referenced in my CAA post where Marty shut out the Bruins, then coached by Pat Burns, and of course there was the St. Patrick’s Day game in 2009 where Marty set the NHL record for wins against the eventual Cup champion Blackhawks.  In an interesting coincidence I was sitting in section 120 then, two years before I would become a season ticket holder there.  I’d bought the tickets weeks before it was obvious what the game could mean but did it intentionally cause I just wanted to sit behind Marty’s net, which turned out to be a fortuitous decision having a birds-eye view of him clipping the net out of a historic game.  Come to think of it I could have just posted a photo of that, but my images aren’t as good as AP’s anyway.

Of course there were many playoff memories, particularly for me in 2003 and 2012 since I was at both the Cup clincher in 2003 and the Eastern Conference clincher in 2012.  In many ways both games and runs embody what Marty was all about as a player and competitor.  Marty showed perserverance during the 2003 Finals after a memorable blunder in Game 3 that turned the series and ending the series on the highest of highs with a Game 7 shutout at home.  2012’s run proved his longevity as he went deep in the playoffs as  a 40-year old goalie who’d already played the most games in NHL history, winning two straight OT games against the Panthers in a seven-game thriller followed by wins against the Devils’ two biggest rivals in the Flyers and Rangers.  Eighteen years to the day after going to the Conference Finals as a rookie and coming up just short against the Rangers all things came full circle in Marty’s career with that Game 6.

While you can’t sum up Marty’s career merely with numbers and records, his numbers and records are more impressive than any goaltender who’s ever played the game.  Whether he’s the best that’s ever played is I suppose up for debate but certainly he’s in the conversation, which was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams in 1994 when I started watching hockey consistently.  Through three lockouts, two decades and a ton of coaching changes Marty and GM Lou Lamoriello were the constants throughout it all.  Once dismissed as merely a ‘product of the system’, Marty proved he was a lot more than that later in his career when he won four Vezina trophies, two of them after the departures of HOF defensemen Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer.  Not only his talent but his durability also made him a legend, playing nearly 1500 NHL games which is also by far the most by any goaltender.  Certainly Marty can leave with no regrets, having accomplished everything in hockey there was to accomplish between records, Cups and Olympic gold.

Even though this chapter of Marty’s career is now over, his hockey career as a whole surely isn’t, given his interest in wanting to become part of management and the promise of a job waiting for him after the season back in New Jersey.  Time will tell whether he’ll be anywhere near as good in management as he was as a player, few are though Steve Yzerman in Tampa is proving it’s possible.  However it turns out, I’m looking forward to seeing his jersey lifted to the rafters next year and watching his Hall of Fame induction speech.  Having watched Marty his whole career that’s going to resonate with me the way it hasn’t with any other player and probably never will again.  As much as I loved Ken Daneyko he wasn’t a legend and I didn’t see his entire career.  Scott Stevens and Scott Niedermayer were legends but I didn’t see their entire careers either.  Nobody on either of my other sports teams (Mets/Jets) can come close to having both Marty’s stature and longevity.  Maybe that’s what makes it so hard to believe it’s finally over other than the after-the-fact celebrations.