Never has such an inevitable result been more annoying, other than I suppose the 2008 playoffs where we lost in five games to a Ranger team we couldn’t even beat in open play during eight games of the regular season that year. Yes, we lost in five games to Carolina which was exactly what I predicted before the series – but the way three of these last four games played out was just an organization that gets off on trolling us doing it once again in epic fashion. All of these last four games were there for the taking to be honest, sure you can say ‘if we had a healthy lineup’ or ‘if Fitz hadn’t done such a pathetic job in maintaining depth up front’ but those are far from the only reasons Devil fans are going to be plagued with a severe case of what-ifs this offseason.

I would like nothing more than to write ‘only’ a season postmortem and just be done with it at this point, but Game 5 was so ridiculous you have to talk about it. Even if I didn’t actually start watching it until almost all the goals were scored last night. I did have a rec league event I was going to go to at 9 PM (which wound up getting canceled) that was a convenient excuse for me to avoid the start of Game 5. With the reports that both Brett Pesce and Jonas Siegenthaler were doubtful for the game, I started wondering about the viability of having an emergency backup defenseman (EBUD), the way all teams are required to have an emergency backup goalie (EBUG). I figured this team was done after the way they flatlined in Game 4 with the game available for the taking, and maybe we would all have been better off if Game 5 was the housing a lot of us expected.

What transpired was actually far worse.

When I got the updates of the Devils going up 1-2-3 to nothing in the first period inside the first ten minutes I was mystified. It all of a sudden looked like the Devils got yet another second wind with their backs to the wall the way they did in Game 3. But to be up three inside of ten minutes at Raleigh? That smelled like a Canes no-show (or us taking advantage of their young backup goalie, if not both) and apparently Jordan Staal said as much after the first period. On our first goal, Dawson Mercer did what few forwards have done in this series – go to the front of the net and tip a goal past Pyotr Kochetkov. It was almost fitting Mercer had his moment of resembling a top-line hockey player while I wasn’t watching given what happened later, but I digress.

A suddenly fired up Timo Meier doubled the Devils’ lead at 5:31 with a hard wrister down low, and then egged on the booing crowd (obviously the homers there want to blame him for being checked into Freddie Andersen, injuring their starter) by asking for more. Love that you’re finally engaged after that crap call woke you up in Game 4 buddy, but this is what we’ve seen too little of from you the last three years. Speaking of waking up, after being a complete net negative in the first four games, ex-Cane Stefan Noesen finally woke up and scored an ‘almost’ power play goal, going to the front and tipping another past Kochetkov just as our man advantage expired. It would be the closest we would get to a power play goal all series, but it was still good enough to give us a 3-0 lead.

At that point I made a huge mistake and texted my friend I was suddenly looking for what time Friday’s game would start and he lectured me. Why do I do these things lol…I mean this is Carolina, Troll HC. Not that I thought the game was literally over after ten minutes, but I at least wanted to start preparing for the possibility I’d be going back to the Prudential Center Friday and was hoping the start time wouldn’t be too late. Our undermanned defense had played well through the balance of the series and Jacob Markstrom couldn’t have a second straight clunker of a game in a row, right? Right?!

My last update before I started driving to Dover was when the game was 3-0 but we’d been supposedly game managed into a lousy penalty call, ergo had to kill a penalty to start the second period. I didn’t see it but can’t really doubt it at this point, the Canes have always had ‘favored son’ status in the NHL and I don’t really get it. It’s one thing when you’re trying to establish a market down there, but that market’s already been established and it’s not like they have a lot of marquee players that’ll sell ratings points in the second round of the playoffs. Maybe it was just a bad call for the sake of making a bad call but it sounds like there were more than one in the middle part of the game.

Anyway I didn’t have the radio on or look at any updates at all, so I half gasped when I finally arrived and saw the score was 4-3 Devils and Carolina had scored the next three goals with the game still in the middle of the second period. And then further rolled my eyes when one of my other friends (who has a two-year old daughter) texted me 4-4, I’m going to bed now. At that point I was thankful I’d stayed away from watching the game and just wanted the season to end. Because let’s be honest, even if the series had gone into Game 6 or Game 7 then the trolls in Carolina would have just found a way to annoy us as much as possible, like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown.

From reading stuff online after my event was canceled and I got home in time for the slog that was the latter part of the third period and OT, it quickly became obvious Jacob Markstrom was a main culprit in the Devils’ second period meltdown. Once I saw the highlights, I knew why. Maybe goal #1 wasn’t the worst in the world to allow, but you’d like better puck control/recognition on the initial Logan Stankoven shot that Taylor Hall found on the goalline and tapped it in just as the Canes’ PP was ending. Goal #2 however was completely inexcusable by any metric – a weak wraparound attempt by Jackson Blake that turned the Canes’ spasm into a surge and completely flipped momentum.

From then on, it was like a boulder rolling downhill. Evidently coach Sheldon Keefe had that same fear, using his timeout to try to stem the tide. Unfortunately, it didn’t work and Andrei Svechnikov tied the game with a wrister through traffic at 5:40 of the period. Three goals on three shots, sorry – not good enough for a guy who’s supposed to be one of our strengths, especially after the way he stunk in Game 3. Had I been watching I would have been aghast why Keefe didn’t pull him for Jake Allen. I mean Pete DeBoer actually did this with Martin Brodeur in the playoffs when Marty was in the midst of melting down during Game 3 against Florida. And like 2012 with Johan Hedberg, we had a vet goalie on the bench. But what’s the point of having a vet goalie on the bench if you’re not even going to go to him when the starter sinks two games in a row? I saw at 4-4 he hadn’t been pulled yet and was shocked.

You have to say that decision (or non-decision) ‘worked’ in asmuch as Markstrom played well after that point, but unlike some I really don’t give him any credit for playing well when the horse was out of the barn. Not when the team is a corpse by then and you are one of the biggest reasons why. Shockingly the Devils actually did re-take the lead after blowing the three-goal edge in near record time, with Nico Hischier finding an open area in the slot and beating Kochetkov for his fourth goal of the series. Not-so-shockingly we gave it right back, with an assist from the refs handing the Canes a 5-on-3 with a dubious call and Sebastian Aho predictably scored to tie the game again. This all happened in barely over eleven minutes of real game action.

Ironically when I did get home after finding my event was canceled and was resigned to watching the end of the Devils’ season there was no more action through the end of regulation, or the first OT. Well there was action all right but it was completely tilted toward our defensive end of the ice. All told, Carolina outshot us 34-12 after the second period, including 19-4 in the two OT’s. And after each Markstrom save that kept our corpse alive, I only got madder that he couldn’t make simple stops earlier in the game and we wouldn’t even be in this fix. We would have already been planning for Game 6 with three days’ rest for a tired group of skaters clearly running on empty now.

My only hope for the second OT was they’d find yet another second wind and the Canes would start to tire from their relentless pressure. And the Nico line did have a good first shift of OT, but then we were torpedoed again due to utter stupidity from an expected source – Mercer, whose inexcusable double major on a high sticking basically sealed the expected result on a silver platter. I figured the goal would come either within five seconds of the power play starting, or within it ending for maximum troll effect. It was closer to the latter as the Devils actually killed off the first part of the major, but inexorably Aho would score the winner ending one of the most joyless ‘good’ seasons I’ve ever experienced as a fan.

Maybe I’ll do a proper season recap/postmortem once cleanout day happens, or breakup day, whatever it’s called when every player and exec gives their final season interviews as the team cleans out its lockers. Normally I avoid this stuff like the plague but I am kind of anxious to hear about the extent of some of these injuries with rumors all over the place about Luke Hughes having surgery and Brendan Dillon potentially having an even more serious injury than that. Without grading individual players (that might come later) it has to be said for the most part this team deserves credit for responding to adversity in this series. Ironically, it’s prosperity they didn’t handle too well throughout the series – caving in with the Game 2 lead, losing a two-goal lead in Game 3, failing to capitalize on momentum in Game 4 and well we just went through the worst of them all.

Still, if Game 3 was a credit to the team and you can’t really fault their effort in this series, you do wonder why they can’t show this fight more consistently? Even the MSG postgame pointed out how different the record was up until late December and after it. Why was our supposedly stable veteran goalie so up and down this season and this series? Not that Allen was great down the stretch either, and he’s one of many decisions Tom Fitzgerald has after the season as he’s a free agent and the Devils have younger goalies who could potentially be Markstrom’s backup next year.

On the one hand I don’t envy Fitz since this is a pivotal offseason, on the other he’s trying to clean up messes he for the large part made, specifically the lack of center depth and general forward depth as well as the lack of mobility + transition on the blueline. You would have liked to see more from the non-Nico forwards in this series but you can’t really ask for AHL scrubs and over-the-hill vets to do more. If I felt like I had famous last words last night with my ill-fated text, so did Fitz himself when he said either before the season or early in the season that scoring wasn’t an issue. Scoring was absolutely an issue considering the team was 19th in goalscoring (fewest of any playoff team outside of the Wild) and much of that was even before Jack Hughes’ injury.

For now though, I’m just tired of this team – tired of the excuses for an underachieving group the last two years or of watching over the hill/underachieving players and tired of having to contend with such an unrealistic spate of injuries on the blueline that if it happened in a video game I’d be adjusting sliders! Most of all, I’m just tired of losing to this organization which gets off trolling on us. Even with our issues, most of these games were there for the taking so clearly a healthy Devils team would have had a good shot at winning the series – provided the overhyped goalie didn’t still sink them anyway.

Aside from a few guys like Nico, Pesce and even Brian Dumoulin who was a revelation in this series (albeit one who’s UFA this offseason, one of Fitz’s many big decisions), I’m just tired and frustrated with almost everyone else in a Devils uniform or a suit upstairs for different reasons. Like I said, I may have a postmortem in a couple days once breakup day happens or maybe it’ll be more of a postmortem/offseason preview closer to the start of the draft/FA. If there’s anything particularly noteworthy coming out of breakup day it’ll perhaps be the former, if not it’ll likely be see you in a couple months for the latter.