Divided loyalties for Tuesday’s home finale provide a fitting end to the Devils’ season (NJ.com picture)

It’s one thing for the New Jersey Devils to be eliminated from the playoffs with eight games to go, in what was only news to the media who highlighted the actual elimination as if it wasn’t a fait accompli since the Calgary and Boston losses at the end of the long February homestand.  It’s another to not even be able to play spoiler down the stretch, since our games against Montreal, the Rangers and Tampa in the last two weeks only could affect the top teams’ playoff seeding while the season finale in Florida (and Jaromir Jagr’s first game against the Devils since being traded) next Saturday will be played in front of crickets now that the Panthers have been eliminated from postseason contention themselves.

As such, it’s become impossible to blog about – or watch this team – aside from the games I’m actually attending like the home finale on Tuesday.  I don’t really want to watch hoping to lose, especially since is it really that big a deal to pick in the six spot or pick in the eight spot anyway?  Maybe so if you’re a draftnik but it’s still way too far in advance to take most prospect rankings and evaluations seriously.  Skaters rise and fall every year in the weeks before the draft, and there’s a non-zero chance we trade the pick for more immediate scoring help anyway.  Of course, the very idea of trading a top ten pick is anethma to Devils fans who want youth, and confidence in GM Lou Lamoriello is so low among the naysayer fans right now you’d think he was going to trade the pick for Patrick Sharp or another over-the-hill 30+ player (apparently forgetting about the Cory Schneider trade, where Lou traded a top ten pick for an obvious cornerstone to the team’s present and future).

Either way, the painful reality is no singular quick-fix trade is going to be enough to get the Devils out of the mess they’re currently in.  Maybe a series of moves can, but if last night’s embarassment at the Garden proved one thing, it’s that the Devils aren’t on the same planet with a true contender right now.  Despite the fact I didn’t even watch the game, just seeing the score on Twitter after the first period and the fact the game balooned to 6-0 before a practically meaningless late goal from Jacob Josefson (only practically cause Jake kind of needs to continue to prove he should be in the lineup next year) was still annoying.  At that point I was kind of hoping for the shutout, if you’re really going to come out and lay that much of an egg against your biggest rival you deserve all the embarassment you can get.  If it wasn’t for the fact I got hit with cold-like symptoms last night I probably would have ranted although at this point it’s beating a dead horse.  Still, there’s only three games left in the season…can you at least try to be more than just a clown prop for the Rangers on Tuesday?!  Especially in front of what’ll likely be a 50-50 Ranger crowd on our ‘Fan Appreciation Night’, which is actually rant material in itself.

Whatever brainiac in this organization decided it was okay to have Fan Appreciation Night on Tuesday should be fired.  I get it’s tradition to have it the last home game of the year, but to have a team poster giveaway and other fan-themed stuff when you can have a significant opposition fan presence in the building to mock, jeer and do worse to the giveaways is just asking for egg on your face.  Ideally you would have had it on Friday against the Habs, but as it worked out there was a significant Hab fan contingent in the building for that game too – although it might not have been the case if the Devils were actually playing meaningful games.  Montreal fans were bad enough, booing Scott Gomez in our building (which quite possibly annoyed him enough to take a match penalty in the game, much to the delight of the Hab fans in attendance) – I just can’t wait for Tuesday with Ranger fans getting even chestier in our building.

What’s more, I can’t blame a single Devils fan for selling their tickets and cashing out of this mess in the making, particularly when entertainment-wise this team honestly just isn’t worth watching.  Admittedly sometimes I sneer at fans who only sell their tickets to Devil-Ranger games to turn a few bucks on it, but I really can’t blame anyone who just doesn’t want to deal with what’s coming on Tuesday.  Not only is it a glorified preseason game for us but who really wants to go to a home game that’s going to be more like an away game regardless?  I don’t want to deal with it either but me and my friend always go to Fan Appreciation Day for the posters, and so I’ll be forced to watch one more Devil game this year, and that’ll be it for me this season.  Part of me wishes this game wasn’t against the Rangers so if the Devils laid an egg they’d get deserved boos as opposed to hearing the Ranger fans cheer their own team.  Especially since I want to just boo them out of the building if they shame themselves again the way they did last night, it would be a fitting end to what’s been a sorry season for the Devils.

It is what it is at this point though, our last home game was against them in 2008 as well but at least they had the good sense then to make it a ‘Fan Appreciation Week’, spreading out the stuff between our next-to-last home game against the Bruins and the finale.  At least that Devil team was in the playoffs though.  This team is getting further away from even that level every season.