Battle Of Hudson

Apart from actually losing tonight’s game against a lousy Panther team, pretty much the worst-case scenario occured tonight when the Devils suffered multiple injuries in what turned out to be a costly 2-1 win.  Early in the second period, Travis Zajac sustained a wrist injury after being slashed where he felt numb for a while after that, but still was able to contribute two assists.  A wild, undisciplined cross-checking penalty by Florida’s Colby Robak midway through the third period resulted in a five-minute major penalty, and knocked out Tim Sestito for the remainder of the game though according to coach Pete DeBoer, he was fine after – though unavailable to reporters.  After the final buzzer, Scottie Upshall cheap-shotted captain Bryce Salvador on the knee, resulting in a scrum.  Apparently the Panthers feel since they’re losing all their players to injury they should try to knock everyone else out too.  However, Salvador said he was fine after the game, and was fortunate to be wearing a knee brace or it might have been a different story.

Yet, it was on a play where no Panther was involved that the Devils suffered a potentially catastrophic injury early in the third, when Ilya Kovalchuk lost an edge, fell into the boards and injured his shoulder – missing the rest of the game, including the Devils’ joke of a five-on-three where they barely registered even a shot on goal for a five-minute power play.  Of more pressing concern than a bad power play getting even more hopeless, is the fact the Devils’ best forward may well be out for a prolonged stretch.  DeBoer cautioned that he’d probably be out a while and there would need to be some guys that step up.  As writer Tom Gulitti noted, DeBoer looked and sounded like he expected Kovy to be out a while.  Officially, they’re doing more tests tonight and tomorrow so hopefully there’ll at least be definitive word and not just the usual day to day crap we’ve come out with for every injury.  Especially one that was obvious to everyone who saw it.

Pretty much the best thing you could say about the game was it was a needed two points.  For much of the game it was kind of an uninspired performance though.  Particularly in a first period where the Devils registered a grand total of two shots on goal – both by Steve Bernier.  Fortunately Florida couldn’t muster much of an attack either, although the lion’s share of their chances came in the final five minutes of the period.  At least the second period was a different story with the Devils coming out more lively, and scoring first at 1:24 when Zajac found Patrik Elias streaking to the net, and he managed to poke the puck past Scott Clemmensen while falling down.

New Jersey controlled much of the second and got a deserved break when Clemmensen held, then dropped a shot from David Clarkson, who stayed with the play and whacked the loose puck in at 11:03 for his twelfth goal of the season (though only the second in his last eighteen games).  In fairness to Clemmensen it looked like he was in control of the puck and had it whacked out of his glove by Clarkson, but I’ll take it.  Especially with all the holding the Panthers were getting away with along the boards, and their cheap shots in the third period.  Despite outshooting the Panthers 12-5, and taking command of the game one little snafu got Florida right back into it with under ten seconds remaining.  Ironically, it was a puck-handling snafu by Martin Brodeur behind the net, who must have wanted to remind the crowd what they were missing with our wild Moose adventures of the past few weeks.  Brodeur’s attempt to fire the puck around the boards hit a chink and died, leaving Tomas Fleischmann to scoop up the puck and find Peter Mueller in front for what could have been a devastating goal.

The fact it wasn’t a momentum-changing goal said more about the Panthers than anything else imo (and the fact we had an intermission to regain our composure).  Even though the Devils outshot Florida again in the third though, it wasn’t a particuarly great effort – especially on a power play that got booed sans Kovy.  Of course, I knew it could be tough to score if we didn’t get one in the first couple minutes and sure enough, that came to pass.  There’s really no excuse for how bad the power play’s been – with or without Kovy, though at least the defense was able to step up in the third and not allow too many quality chances.  For the second game in a row though, Brodeur was strong stopping the puck making scattered key saves throughout the game.

Every new win seems to be a milestone for the HOF’er to be, though tonight’s career win #666 was more or less a spectacular coincidence, considering 666 is the number of the fictional devil, and right now there’s no more identifable real Devil than Brodeur.  A group of fans were even holding up the numbers after the game. Marty’s own brother once quipped he should retire after hitting win #666, and wanted his stick from the game – which he got.  Despite the Devils’ two straight wins though, quite a few more Marty victories are going to be required to return to the postseason this year.

A task that may get much harder depending on what the final word is on Kovalchuk tomorrow.

With Martin Brodeur set to return after three weeks off, I literally could have seen anything happen tonight in Carolina – or so I thought.  Anything from a repeat of his transcendent shutout in 2009 against Colorado after four months on the shelf, to him being rusty and allowing a handful of goals and/or making a costly puckhandling mistake and really sending us off the deep end after all of Johan Hedberg‘s puckhandling adventures.  Of all the scenarios I imagined though, this wasn’t one of them:

No misprint there, and April Fool’s is still a couple weeks away.  Yes, Brodeur set an NHL record by scoring the third goal of his career after a bizarre series of events.  At 3:33 of the first, Carolina’s Alex Semin took a tripping penalty but almost as soon as the Devils got on the power play, Marek Zidlicky canceled it out with a penalty of his own.  I literally turned away from the TV and towards the computer for a second and then heard the MSG announcers go nuts about the Devils scoring and I was like ‘WHAT?!’.  With Canes goalie Dan Ellis leaving the crease to go towards the bench, an errant Jordan Staal pass missed whoever was streaking in off the point, bounced off the boards at center ice and took a perfect (for us) carom in, with the puck just beating Ellis back to the net.

Still in disbelief over that, I was even more surprised to learn that indeed Brodeur was the last Devil to touch the puck, tapping a puck out of the crease just before the penalty and got the goal.  At that moment this felt like a game the Devils could not lose.  Yet, through the first ten minutes of the game it was Carolina that dominated, immediately testing Brodeur’s readiness.  If his goal was fluky, his puckstopping was not – making several crucial saves (and getting a couple of fortunate bounces too) to keep that 1-0 lead despite a Canes surge that crested with the aformentioned power play opportunity – extended to a full two minutes when Semin actually left the box, because Brodeur’s goal was technically on the power play.  I was actually annoyed, it seemed like the Devils were content to let Marty win the game by himself and in a must-win situation I was really worried.

However, after the first TV timeout the Devils settled down although they didn’t create much offense of their own outside of the ‘goal’, being outshot 11-4 in the opening twenty minutes.  Most of those eleven shots came in the first ten minutes though, as defensively the Devils picked it up after that.  Once the defense fell into line, the offense eventually followed, although it took a long time for that second, critical breakthrough.  An Adam Larsson shot from the point hit off Ilya Kovalchuk in front, and bounced right to Adam Henrique, who chipped home the rebound at 12:52 for his tenth goal of the season.

Now up 2-0, the Devils took advantage of some 4-on-4 action to create a highlight reel goal just forty-six seconds later, with some brilliant work by Travis Zajac along the boards and a nice drop pass by Patrik Elias finding a streaking Peter Harrold.  After Ellis made the initial save on Harrold, he batted home the rebound off a backhand that showed terrific hand-eye coordination.  Harrold scored his second in three games, after not having a single goal as a Devil before this week, and gave the Devils a (gasp!) comfortable-feeling 3-0 lead.  With the Devils outshooting Carolina 18-7 in the final two periods it felt like the game was in total control for most of the night, a feeling that has been missing much of the season.

My only moment of semi-consternation came when Brodeur’s shutout was foiled moments into a Carolina power play when Jeff Skinner fired a rocket that may have glanced off Bryce Salvador‘s stick, and did dip under Brodeur’s glove at 11:27 of the third to get Carolina on the board.  At this point, a mostly comatose Carolina crowd finally came to life and I was just thinking to myself, ‘please don’t let them get another one, I’d like at least one lousy game where I don’t have a feeling of impending doom’.  After Skinner had two good chances on his next shift however, the Devils regained control.  A tripping call on Eric Staal proved decisive when the Devils re-gained their three-goal cushion at 16:54 when Andrei Loktionov cemented his own happy return after a week-long absence with a backhand goal off a rebound in the slot for his fifth goal of the season.

However, the night as usual belonged to Brodeur with the game’s first star – along with another NHL record.  And yes, he handled the puck flawlessly.  One moment in particular during the second period showed me how much he was missed just for that skill, when he was able to turn around, gather the puck and fire a perfect no-look backhander around to his defenseman in one fluid motion.  Even if Hedberg didn’t make mistakes, he could never do that.  Very few can.  More importantly for the team however, this win stopped the bleeding and gave them a much-needed win over another playoff contender.  And with the out-of-town scoreboard bringing mostly good news (Rangers/Islanders losing), that just shows how much things can change on the snap of a finger.  Tuesday’s loss to the Rangers was canceled out tonight, for all intents and purposes.

There’s little time to rest however, the Devils have to do what the Rangers did not tonight and beat a Panther team that’s suddenly showed some fight winning two straight despite injury woes and being for all intents and purposes the only East team out of the playoff picture.  As I said the other night, this is the time the Devils need to make some hay.  The time for excuses is over now that ‘most’ of the cavalry’s back, and the schedule spaces out in terms of games played over the number of days left in the season.

After nearly falling out of a playoff spot a few games ago before momentarily straightening out the ship with three wins in four games, the Devils’ backs are now firmly up against a wall after their 3-2 defeat at the hands of the Rangers last night.  Or more accurately, a game gifted away with mistakes galore and the usual lack of finish.  I had an inkling we were in for it last night when even Arlette came up with a hoarse voice and had to ask the crowd for help singing the anthem.  You know things are bad when the anthem singer’s day-to-day.

In the past, I’ve often made light of Devils slumps by using the ’80’s movie WarGames.  If you’re not familiar with the movie, Matthew Broderick plays a high-school computer hacker who accidentally creates havoc at NORAD, causing the US military to believe that the Russians are launching a nuclear attack and ramp up the defense readiness of the military.  DEFCON is the term that describes the defense readiness – with DEFCON 5 being peace in the nation, and DEFCON 1 being Armageddon, or World War 3.

Well, this is the moment…it is now DEFCON 1 in Devil land.  Yes, there are still 18 games left, but time is running out fast now that the Devils have slipped to ninth place on percentage points.  Yes, the cavalry with Martin Brodeur, Andrei Loktionov, Danius Zubrus and Henrik Tallinder are all returning soon (though now Alexei Ponikarovsky is the latest Devil to be shelved with an unknown injury) – with Brodeur and Loktionov both returning in Carolina on Thursday.  Will the cavalry fully arrive after the war has been lost though?

Bear in mind Brodeur’s been out nearly a month, expecting him to be razor sharp off the hop is unrealistic, although he did begin this lockout-shortened season that way after a much longer layoff.  Still, he wasn’t coming back from a pinched nerve that was causing numbness in his hand this offseason.  At least the puck-handling misadventures of the Moose can finally end.  While I understand Johan Hedberg trying to play the puck more than he should to make sure the rest of the team could play its normal system, the fact was that Hedberg turning simple plays into disasters by overplaying the puck cost the team at least two-three games during his thirteen starts.  Yes, he made big saves last night but his snafu in the first period could be one that ultimately keeps this team out of the playoffs.

Our forward depth, already reeling from the loss of a combined 50+ goals from Zach Parise and Petr Sykora this offseason, has felt the further pinch of losing Zubrus long-term and Loktionov short-term.  Yes, guys like Travis Zajac and David Clarkson need to score a bit more, but really with the lack of forward depth you can certainly key on the few good ones left.  Clarkson was another example of this steam’s stupidity last night regardless.  After being told by coach Pete DeBoer he needs to shoot more, Clarkson took it to the nth degree, becoming a black hole and putting every single low-percentage shot on Henrik Lundqvist possible, while passing up open teammates.  As a team, the Devils frequently shot when they should have passed and vice-versa.  Though the shot total told one story, it wouldn’t shock me if the Rangers had more quality chances last night.  Felt like they did anyway, especially during the third period where the Devils could barely complete two straight passes, or gain the zone until getting some late empty-net pressure in the final seconds.

Although looking at the schedule can be an utter waste of time – especially given how many bad-bubble teams the Devils have lost to over these last eighteen games in a 5-10-3 meltdown (after an 8-1-2 start), fact is the Devils need to make hay in the next few games.  In their next six, the Devils are going up against other bubble teams such as Carolina, Ottawa and the Islanders as well as playing a non-playoff team in Tampa and two games against the ghost of a Panther team who’s been destroyed by injuries this year after barely losing a classic series to us last year.  Anything less than four wins could spell doom and even that might not be enough.

Down the stretch, the Devils get the iron put to them with home/road games against Boston and Toronto, as well as other games at Buffalo and home against Ottawa before a final, potentially decisive six-game finish starting April 18 at Philly, home against the Panthers, at the Garden, home against Montreal and Pittsburgh and at the Garden again.  A playoff berth that once looked like a fait accompli is now in real peril, and we could be in danger of wasting one of the last years of Brodeur’s career without even playing a May game.  Next year things won’t get easier for any of the Atlantic teams with the additions of Carolina, Washington and a suddenly improving Columbus team and only a max of five playoff spots to come out of that division.

For at least 2/3 of the league including the Devils, the playoffs are already underway.