Battle Of Hudson

After their Stanley Cup Game 6 defeat in LA last night, hundreds of Devil fans expressed the same sentiments I did in the last paragraph of my blog about wanting to do something to show the team our appreciation for a great playoff run. A groundswell of internet support eventually led to the info that the Devils’ plane would be landing in Newark at about 4 PM, with the players and coaches showing up at the arena to get their cars and drive off. $3 parking at the parking garage, a team poster and discounted merchandise (30% off) at the Devils Den were offered to those who came out and a good number of fans showed up in the rain to greet the team. Not exactly the throng that would have greeted them if the Devils had won the series in Game 6, but in some ways more heartfelt. I was only sorry I couldn’t make it, but hey I got my chance to send them off after Game 5 and tons of enjoyment at the Rock this year.

Even the mayor of Newark – who was engaged in a running battle with Devils owner Jeff Vanderbeek earlier in the playoffs – was moved by the display:

Cory Booker ‏@CoryBooker
Just watched Devils player’s bus returning to The Rock & a large crowd of fans cheering their return. Here is to loyal & committed fans

Maybe over this weekend I’ll get around to looking ahead to FA and the many questions ahead for the Devils heading towards next year. For now, this seems like an apropos close to the 2011-12 season.

Accepting that the Devils’ season ended the way it did last night still hasn’t gotten much easier the morning after almost six hours of sleep last night. What’s hard to accept about last night isn’t so much that the Devils lost. For whatever I’m about to say regarding last night, the Kings were the better team in the majority of this series and deserved to win their first Stanley Cup in franchise history. Through long stretches of the series, we weren’t even able to get shots on Johnathan Quick, much less goals and at times the Kings dominated the attack but only the valiant goaltending of Martin Brodeur was able to keep them at bay long enough for us to scratch out two wins and get back into the series. And I certainly have nothing bad to say about any individual on the Devils, after the way they spit blood to get to this point and went from last year’s lottery to this year’s Eastern Conference Champs.

All that said, the fact that the refs took it upon themselves to decide a Stanley Cup clinching game last night midway through the first period is asinine, I’m sorry. I understand why the Devils had to take a pass at saying what they really wanted to – just read coach Pete DeBoer‘s lips during the TV broadcast to know the truth – but after Dan O’Halloran called a five-minute major and ejected Steve Bernier I knew that could prove decisive with the way our PK’s been scored on during the playoffs. Sure enough, the Kings pounded home three goals during the five-minute major, in effect ending the game against a team we couldn’t score more than two on in any game with Quick (a deserving Conn Smythe winner) in net. Did Bernier commit a penalty, absolutely…I would have had no issue with a double-minor and ten-minute misconduct. Was it worthy of expulsion midway through the first period and a series-deciding five-minute major? Not to me. At least not in that situation. I’d have felt better about assessing a major if it was midway through the game and things were getting heated, but honestly it felt like we lost the opportunity to even compete for the Cup on-ice by having that go against us in the first period.

Maybe I’m wrong and it was a major – and even if it was, doesn’t change the fact the refs also missed Stephen Gionta getting taken out (which would have ended the play before Bernier got involved) or Anton Volchenkov getting punched just before that – but it’s still bothersome that the Devils wound up going out the way they did last night. This team deserved to go out on its shield, not have the opportunity taken away by a moment of stupidity and an overofficious ruling. I’m not even going to harp on the 47-6 difference in penalty minutes last night, honestly the Devils did lose their heads and came close to embarassing themselves after going behind 3-0, and eventually 4-0 early in the second period. At that moment I knew the game was beyond repair anyway, but I would rather not have seen the Devils go head-hunting at that point. Let’s face it though, they’re human beings and they were not only devastated over having a chance to compete for a title dissapear in the first fifteen minutes, but also I’m sure feeling horrible for Bernier – a gritty fourth-liner who revived his NHL career this season.

Looking at Bernier afterward, you could tell he was emotional during the game and he stood up to face all the questions. Given the fact he’s a UFA after the season, what happened last night got an instant reaction from part of the fanbase that he can’t come back, that it’s somehow an unforgivable sin. I can understand Devil fans being hot at him, he did put himself in position to have that call made by running Rob Scuderi. That said, hockey’s a forgiving culture. A lot more forgiving than the rest of sports, or society for that matter. It’s part of what makes our sport so likable for true hockey fans. If the Oilers had jettisoned Steve Smith after his gaffe in the 1986 Campbell Conference Finals, there wouldn’t have been the feel-good moment there was the next season, when Wayne Gretzky handed the Stanley Cup to Smith first.

Plus one of the things that made this Devil team so likeable is the fact they were all willing to lay themselves out for each other and their fans. After a series of teams that had become increasingly robotic and gutless on the way to easy playoff losses and the ’10-11 first half disaster, the metamorphisis back to this point now was just about as meaningful as any title. Especially when the cost to these players individually becomes known in the next few weeks. Even early in the playoffs it looked like this team might be gassed, after a regular season in which the top three lines all had to play major minutes due to the then-ineptitude of the fourth line. Somehow, they perservered through a seven-game double-OT series against Florida, coming back from losing Game 1 against the Flyers to win four straight and coming back from being shut out two of the first three games against the Rangers to win a memorable Conference Finals in a Game 6 OT.

Yes, this team won’t be all back next year…such is the nature of hockey. Even when it’s possible to bring the same team back it might not be advisable given how much this run took out of everyone. Look at Boston, they brought back something like eighteen of twenty skaters other than Mark Recchi and Tomas Kaberle (a bit player in the playoffs), and still wound up having a bit of Stanley Cup hangover, losing seven of ten to open the season and eventually the first round of the playoffs – in a classic series, granted. Vancouver also lost in the first round after getting to the Finals last year. Some of those decisions are going to be out of our hands, but I don’t really want to get into it now. Yes, everyone knows about Zach Parise‘s impending UFA status…but the fact is we have other FA’s too, such as Martin Brodeur – though he’s likely to return, playoff hero Bryce Salvador – who probably will get an offer too pricey for us next month, especially with the lack of spots for him next year with a returning Henrik Tallinder and maturing Adam Larsson – and our entire fourth line is UFA as well.

It will be very interesting to see what happens with the fourth line, which amazingly carried the Devils at times during the postseason. Ryan Carter, in particular will probably get some offers that might be too much to match, especially given what happens with the captain and other UFA’s. Stephen Gionta was a relevation in this postseason, and Bernier for whatever you want to say about him now was part of a line that was a lifesaver for us the last two months. We have other FA’s too, like Petr Sykora (the best Devil last night), Alexei Ponikarovsky and backup goalie Johan Hedberg, along with fill-in defenseman Peter Harrold who played capably in many postseason games. Obviously not everyone’s coming back.

If this season proved one thing though, it’s that GM Lou Lamoriello still has ‘it’. After much criticism the past few seasons for trades and FA signings and defections that didn’t work out combined with decreasing returns on the ice, he had the magic touch this year with seemingly every move he made working out. Starting with his hiring of coach Pete DeBoer, who was the right man at the right time. Obviously a lot of what happens this offseason will be out of Lou’s control though, starting with how ownership gets resolved – or if it does – and what impact that has on Parise and other key FA’s. People can harp on Zach till the cows come home, but one of the many reasons the Devils got as far as they did was their depth up front. And that depth is going to take a hit one way or another, there’s no way around it.

I’d prefer not to look ahead though, especially since what’s ahead is close enough anyway. We have fewer than two weeks till the draft and three weeks till UFA starts. Next preseason is in three months, barring more nonsense between commisioner Gary Bettman and player’s rep Donald Fehr (the cause of much angst for baseball fans). I only wish I could show this group of players the appreciation they deserve, beyond blog posts. There isn’t going to be a parade or ceremony, nor should there be…but they do deserve more than just a quiet return to Newark to clean out their lockers before an abbreviated summer off. This team did the franchise and its fanbase proud, every last one of them.

One common saying, repeated ad nauseum by Devils GM Lou Lamoriello is that your best players have to be your best players. While Martin Brodeur did his part in the first four games of the series, captain Zach Parise hadn’t put up a point yet in the Stanley Cup Finals, leading to a testy exchange between him and the media before last night’s Game 5. However last night both men did their part, as Brodeur made twenty-five saves en route to being the first star, while the captain was all over the place – blocking shots, backchecking and taking advantage of a puck-handling gaffe by Johnathan Quick to get the all-important first goal (and first power play goal of the series for the Devils) in a 2-1 Devils win that sends the series back to LA yet again.

Much has been said about the Devils’ attempt to make history in this Stanley Cup Finals. Twenty-six teams have been down 3-0 in the final series, of those twenty six, twenty three of those series ended in four or five games. Last night, the Devils became the first team since the 1945 Red Wings to even force a Game 6 in a SCF down 3-0 (the Wings lost in 7). Clearly this team believes it can be just the second in history to win a Stanley Cup after trailing 3-0, as coach Pete DeBoer said, you’d have to figure someone’s going to do it in the next couple hundred years…why not us? Unofficially, that’s become our second slogan of this year’s postseason after Ilya Kovalchuk coined ‘swarm it up’ at the start of the playoffs.

Belief isn’t going to be enough however, especially against a good team like the Kings. LA came out at the start of this game like they meant business, dominating play until an interference penalty on Willie Mitchell gave the Devils their first power play. After going 0-15 with the man advantage in the first four games of the series, the Devils perhaps needed a break to get them going. Quick gave it to them, trying to play the puck backwards off and around the boards, but instead the puck caromed out front towards a vacated net. Parise pounced on it and just barely was able to beat Quick, who nearly was quick enough to atone for his gaffe. Looking at the replay afterward, I’m stunned Quick even got that close to saving it but fortunately things are finally starting to go our way now. Parise’s goal at 12:45 gave the Devils a home lead in the series for the first time and the captain his eighth playoff goal.

Even that goal didn’t deter the Kings, who continued to dominate in the first period and early into the second. Fortunately Brodeur’s stellar goaltending and some timely shot-blocking from guys like Parise, Adam Henrique and Anton Volchenkov (who swatted a dangerous floater out of harm’s way with a high stick) kept the LA onslaught at bay…until early in the second period, when Justin Williams caused a breakdown in the Devil defense juking by Andy Greene, and then taking advantage of the red sea parting in front of him by firing home a wrister from the slot at 3:26 of the second. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Williams (one of the few prior Cup winners on the Kings) was their best player last night, and he nearly got another one later in the period when Brodeur somehow managed to stop him on the doorstep with an instinct save.

After the Kings tied it however, the Devils stayed the course and eventually caught another break when David Clarkson found himself between Quick and the net, clearly in the crease but he somehow managed to scoot out of there without making contact on the Kings’ goaltender. Clarkson cleared out just in time to set a moving screen for a Bryce Salvador shot that hit off the shoulder of Slava Voynov and went past Quick at 9:05 for the amazing Salvador’s fourth goal of the playoffs. Salvador’s fourteenth point of the postseason tied him with the Kings’ Drew Doughty for the scoring lead among defensemen in the playoffs, simply astounding for a guy who had no goals and eight points the entire regular season.

With the lead back, the Devils played their best hockey of the night in the latter half of the second period, despite having to kill off back-to-back penalties by Mark Fayne and Salvador. Most of our best even-strength shifts of the night took place at this juncture, with the Devils registering twelve of their nineteen shots in the second. Unfortunately our best chance to really establish some breathing room hopped over the stick of Ryan Carter when he was all alone in front of Quick late in the period. Clearly, the Kings needed the horn to sound on the second period and they came out in the third just like they did in the first – peppering Brodeur and hemming us in our own end. On more than one occasion last night, I said to my fellow sth next to me that this seemed like a Ranger game. Get pinned in your own end for much of the game, get great goaltending with timely shot-blocking and score just enough to win.

After getting six shots in the first six minutes though (without any for us), a penalty on Dustin Brown slowed the Kings’ momentum. Perhaps that’s one reason why the captain didn’t see the ice in the final few minutes of the game. Kovalchuk had a great chance to score soon after, but a quick glove save by the Kings’ goaltender again prevented us from getting an insurance goal. Fortunately the Devils’ defense clamped down after that, only allowing three more shots the rest of the way with a few crucial shot blocks in the final minutes helping the cause. Maybe the Kings’ frustration started to show last night, with a couple of after-the-whistle scrums near both goaltenders punctuated by an unnamed King on audio calling Volchenkov a ‘****ing p***y’ after going down on a high stick that caused blood to flow, and the Kings’ bench also accused Elias of diving while Mike Richards went down quicker and easier than anyone last night on an attempt to draw a call in the third.

One of those scrums led to a four-on-four in the final minute and a half of the game when Alexei Ponikarovsky and Dustin Penner got matching roughing penalties after Henrique battled for position in front of the net and wound up on his stomach, head facing towards the King goalie. For his trouble, Henrique got a rabbit shove to the head and chaos nearly ensued. With more open ice, the Kings’ Alex Martinez got a couple of one-timer chances at the left side of the net late but fortunately Brodeur stood his ground and a couple more timely blocks helped us hang on to a hard-fought 2-1 win that now puts us just two wins away from history. Despite the increased number of Kings fans who made the weekend trip up to New Jersey (including Matthew Perry, who got obligatory boos when he was shown on the jumbotron) hoping to see history, the Rock was rocking last night much more than even the first two games.

It’s really bizarre just how much time the postseason encompasses. We’re almost in the middle of baseball season and I’ve paid scant attention to the Mets so far, not even realizing Johan Santana had thrown a no-hitter until after the game was over. It’s early June, getting humid outside last night and still we have playoff hockey going on. Last night when my sth neighbor was counting the number of home games and I realized it was in double digits – Saturday was the eleventh postseason game of the playoffs in Newark to be exact – I was stunned at that. To put it in perspective, there’s just twelve days until next season’s draft takes place (almost certainly without a first-round pick for the Devils) and free-agency is just three weeks away. If this playoff run becomes a blur to the fans, imagine what it must be for the players. Henrique put it well when he said, ‘You travel here and there between games. You lose track of what day it is, but that doesn’t really matter. I guess you either know it’s game day or it’s not game day. That’s all that matters’

At least the Devils didn’t go down like the Kings’ other three opponents, without winning a home game. Last night finally ended the Kings’ spotless road streak, giving them their first loss in eleven road games. Now they return home with another chance to hoist the Cup in front of their fans. Meanwhile, the Devils hope to give the Cup even more frequent flier miles with one more cross-country trip. If last night was a hard game to win, Game 6 will be even harder. Fortunately the guys in the room know exactly what it’ll take. Parise himself said the team has to play better going forward than they did last night, and I agree with him. I’ve said this already but whatever happens from here the Devils can be proud of their reslience this postseason.

All that said, now the pressure’s clearly on LA to win it at home before they completely blow a 3-0 lead and face a winner take all Game 7 back in Newark on Wednesday night, despite Darryl Sutter‘s lame attempt to say we had the pressure because we had home ice and finished with more points in the regular season. If this playoffs has proved one thing it’s that this regular season has been completely irrelevant for the sixteen teams that made the cut. Particularly the sixth-seeded Devils and eighth-seeded Kings. All that matters is being ready to play and executing. Both our teams will be ready to play tomorrow night. We’re going to need to show the same poise and execution we’ve exhibited throughout this postseason to have a chance to see another home game and a Stanley Cup presentation in Newark on Wednesday.

Despite being behind 3-0 in games to a white-hot Kings team heading into last night’s Game 4 after being shut down 4-0 in Game 3, the Devils vowed not to give in to the overwhelming odds against them. And as has been the case throughout these playoffs, they did not buckle to adversity in a hostile building with the Stanley Cup in the house. Yet, for the longest time it looked as if the series was going to end with one final frustration. Even when the Devils finally were able to grab their first lead of the series at 7:56 of the third period, a questionable penalty call on David Clarkson led to a Drew Doughty power play goal exactly a minute later that could have been the final, crushing blow to the Devils’ psyche. Maybe for a lesser team it would have been just that.

Then again, a lesser team wouldn’t have gotten this far in the first place with all the obstacles the Devils have already faced. True to form, they fought their way through when Adam Henrique – sporting much less facial hair other than a Ryan Carter-esque mustache – scored yet another big goal with just 4:31 left in regulation to restore the Devils’ lead. Shortly after, Willie Mitchell took an ill-timed (for them) high-sticking penalty on Ilya Kovalchuk. Kovy would get the last laugh on the Kings and their booing fans, by scoring an empty-netter for his eighth goal of the playoffs to seal the game with just twenty seconds remaining, ensuring both teams a trip back to Newark for Game 5 Saturday night.

Prior to last night’s game, after making no changes to the lineup through the first three games, coach Pete DeBoer made two pivotal ones last night – restoring vets Petr Sykora and Henrik Tallinder to the lineup – at the expense of Jacob Josefson and Peter Harrold. I was in the minority of Devil fans in that I was in favor of both changes. Sure, Josefson brings speed and Sykora’s a one-dimensional player right now, but after scoring two goals in three games plus two OT’s, it’s a dimension we sorely needed. And while Harrold’s played well, the Kings’ size has really hurt us in the series. Tallinder adds both that and a veteran presence to the lineup, not to mention gives us another defenseman who can play on the PK, which has struggled throughout the playoffs.

Of course, there were emotional reasons to want to put them both in the lineup as well. Tallinder’s fought back from a blood clot in his leg which has kept him out for over four months, and was only recently cleared to return to action. Not to mention Tallinder’s been a vet in this league for a long time and never was able to take the ice in a Stanley Cup Final game. Brian knows how close Tallinder came in 2006, when injuries to he – and other Sabre defensemen – derailed them just short of the Finals that year. For Sykora it’s just the opposite, he’s been to a remarkable six Stanley Cup Finals in twelve seasons (’00-01 Devils, ’03 Ducks, ’07-08 Pens and now this year)…but after a Cindrella season where he came back from the scrap heap to put up 20+ goals and 40+ points, this could be his last opportunity on a big stage with the team he started out with.

Results were mostly positive, as Sykora played just over twelve minutes and forced Johnathan Quick to make a tough early save. He also got a +1 for being on the ice when longtime buddy Elias scored off a rebound of a Bryce Salvador shot. Tallinder played nearly twenty minutes, registering two shots on goal and providing a boost to a defense that looked on the verge of getting overrun in Game 3 after performing valiantly in the postseason. Early on, the Devils played with the desperation of a team not wanting to go home yet but after a penalty-filled first period (two minors for each team) and a second period where the Kings held us without a shot for nearly fifteen minutes, things didn’t look too good. Though Martin Brodeur was keeping the game scoreless, the low shot totals on both sides – fourteen for the Kings and eleven for us – magnified the importance of getting the first goal.

Knowing I would be uptown anyway after my own little playoff drama (a final in a kickball league that we lost due to a tough bounce off a tree that cost us three runs, but we still got a $75 food and drink gift certificate at a local bar/restaurant for coming in second), I figured I might as well stay at the bar for the duration of the game, hoping to change our luck. Between being at a bar and hanging out with my team for the last time, I wasn’t paying as much attention to the first two periods as I’d intended to, but after everyone else left during the second intermission I was going to as well. Then I doubled back to go to the bathroom and started chatting up some girls from another team – all Devils fans staying at the bar for the game. Considering my team was filled with Ranger and Flyer fans for the most part, this was a welcome sight for me so I hung with them in the third period and was able to watch more of the drama that unfolded.

After Elias’s goal I had hope, but when Clarkson got called for his ‘boarding’ (more like a love tap), I had a bad feeling. Of course, it only took seconds for Doughty to score and at this point it just didn’t seem fair. Not so much for the bad call itself, but to play so hard and finally take a lead after over four games’ worth of hockey – factoring in the overtimes – only to lose it a minute later like that, it just made me sad. Having a great season end this way with all of this effort being crushed without a sniff of hope didn’t seem right. However, last night hockey justice did get served in the end when Clarkson wound up contributing to the goal that put us back in front. Clarkson’s cross ice pass found the skate of Henrique and the clutch rookie made a brilliant play, kicking the puck to his stick, then rifling a high shot past Quick shortside for his fourth huge goal of the postseason. While his prior two goals eliminated another team, this one prevented our own elimination as the Devils took a 2-1 lead.

Thanks to Mitchell’s penalty, the Devils were able to not only run off two vital minutes but even come up with some chances on a makeshift power play that employed two defensemen. With our normal power play 0-for the series (in fourteen chances), perhaps DeBoer should scrap the normal unit and just run our normal cycling offense with the man advantage? If pointmen Kovalchuk and Marek Zidlicky were healthy, it would be one thing but with both battling injuries and our third pointman on the power play (Harrold) sitting in the stands, it’s not as if the normal power play is going to do much anyway…particuarly against a terrific Kings PK that looks for shorthanded chances. Five-on-five we’ve either held our own or dominated most of the postseason, maybe treating the power play like a five-on-five and keeping it simple will yield some unexpected dividends. It couldn’t be any worse, other than actually allowing shorthanded goals, and theoretically having two defensemen are supposed to help prevent that anyway. Heck, throw out the fourth line too while we’re at it, since they’ve been the only line consistently scoring goals over the last couple of weeks.

In any event the power play was beneficial to us, and we finished out a period where we more than doubled our shot total in style – with Kovy getting the empty-netter to ensure not only both teams went back to Newark, but the Stanley Cup as well. With the Cup in our building for Game 5 this time, I’ve been pondering how I’ll handle things if Saturday’s game goes the wrong way. Most hockey fans are good in that they stay for the ceremony itself – there’s been plenty of evidence of that over the last few years with the last four Cups going to the visiting team. Even though I was in the building for 2003 when the ‘right’ team won, you can’t take these ceremonies for granted. Hockey’s got the best trophy in sports and is the hardest to win. Even just seeing the Cup presented itself is rare and staying an extra ten-fifteen minutes to commemorate the end of another NHL season on a Saturday night isn’t the worst thing in the world. Of course, if the game goes to multiple OT’s all bets are off. Me and my friend may just stay around long enough to see the Devils off if that happens and then get out of dodge, I can always see the ceremony on TV and I don’t need to stick around to boo Gary Bettman (as I’m sure most Devil fans will do, vociferously) at one in the morning.

All that said, I have more belief in this Devils team down 3-1 than I did in the first round when we were down 3-2 to Florida. This team’s proven so much already during this postseason, shedding its recent demons and showing they can handle whatever gets thrown at them. It’s not so much a belief we will come back, the task still remains daunting and my respect for LA is still there. However, I do think we’ll win Game 5, and then if it gets back to LA for Game 6 all the pressure in the world shifts to them. All bets are off if we’re able to come out of there with a win. I do get tired of hearing the cliche ‘one at a time’ because however true it is, it’s overstated to a degree. Everyone knows you can only win one at a time, but you still have to win three more in a row no matter how you want to slice it.

Someone else put it in a new way that I hadn’t thought of before, but one that makes the task in front of us seem far less daunting. If you’re a Devils fan, think of these four games (starting with Game 4) in the same way you would think of the NCAA tournament. Four straight single-elimination games – I know it’s actually six in the NCAA but I digress – to win a Stanley Cup. College teams win four and even five-six straight single-elimination games every year in the NCAA tournament. We only have to win three more. That analogy really de-mythicizes history a little, the history that says only three teams ever in NHL history have come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a series, only one in the Stanley Cup Finals…way back in 1942. Not to mention it did just happen with the Flyers and Bruins a couple of years ago in an East semifinal, and nearly happened with Red Wings-Sharks and Blackhawks-Canucks playoff series in the last couple of years as well. Both of those series went to a Game 7 and were decided by one goal, after a 3-0 lead was taken. With the parity in this league, it becomes less about talent and more about execution and who can get hot.

Make no mistake, this will be tough…and it still wouldn’t shock me if the Kings won tomorrow night and completed their perfect 11-0 road record in the playoffs. However, if the Devils do manage to ride home-ice to a win, then the flicker of hope I now have will burst into a full flame. I’ll be one of the 17,625 in the building on Saturday (well I’m not really sure about the 17,625 now that section 226 in the upper deck has been turned into another press room), hoping against hope for this magical run to continue.

It’s hard to know where to start this blog. I don’t want to write a full-on eulogy on the one hand, since the Devils still have more hockey to play, still have a theoretical chance to win the Stanley Cup. At this point it’s just theoretical though, now that the Devils are behind 3-0 in games after a 4-0 loss in LA last night put them in a hole only one team’s ever gotten out of, and the ’42 Maple Leafs did it in the days when the NHL playoffs were just two rounds and the league was six teams big. If tomorrow’s game or Saturday’s game does go the wrong way though, I won’t feel much like writing then. Right now I have a somewhat similar feeling that I did towards the end of last year, when the Devils’ miracle run to the playoffs came up short. Not angry, just sad that it looks like the fun’s finally coming to an end. Watching last night’s postgame with Steve Cangelosi, Ken Daneyko and Chico Resch in an empty goal bar at the Prudential Center really drove it home. On the one hand, I was glad they were around, so to speak, to help Devil fans all over commiserate about the loss. On the other hand, it served as a metaphor of a season on the brink of ending.

Before I really get into what I want to say, a quick word or three on last night’s game, which was scoreless in the second period before a critical play that decided the game, when LA defenseman Alec Martinez was allowed to whack at the pad of Martin Brodeur repeatedly when he clearly was in control of the puck. Eventually the puck finally squirted behind him for an infuriating goal. Infuriating because of what it meant – falling behind in Game 3 already down two games in the series just made the hole that much deeper, and infuriating because it never should have happened. Especialy when ref Dan O’Hallaran had a quick trigger on his whistle when Johnathan Quick merely touched the puck twice earlier in the game. According to former goalies Chico, Kevin Weekes and Darren Pang (the latter two on the NHL Network) it was clearly the wrong call.

Would it have changed the game last night? Hard to tell, since it’s not like we showed a lot of hope of getting a puck behind Quick even before then. Plus it seemed as if the refs knew they screwed up and started calling everything known to man for us immediately after the goal – though our popgun power play couldn’t take advantage of several chances (including a five-on-three earlier in the game). Despite the fact the Devils came out with some jump and were the better team over the first thirty-five minutes of the game, it wasn’t translating into goals call or no call. A beautiful tic-tac-toe play finished off by Anze Kopitar late in the second and two power play goals given up early in the third ended the game as a contest.

I had long since turned off the TV before then, because analyst Ed Olcyzk and color guy Pierre McGuire royally ticked me off last night, and I wasn’t in the mood for it. Having attended the first two games, I’d read on various message boards how biased they were against the Devils, but I figured it was people just exaggerating. It wasn’t, the fact that both of them actually thought the Martinez play was a good goal – and also accused Stephen Gionta of setting an illegal pick earlier in the game when he made incidental contact with Jarret Stoll really set me off. I know Doc Emrick used to be a Devils broadcaster, but come on. At least he puts his bias in a drawer other than letting it slip out a little bit on the Adam Henrique series-winning goal against the Rangers. I don’t even bother watching the NBC pregame or intermission stuff because the only guy I can stand is Keith Jones.

Listening to Matt Loughlin and Sherry Ross for the latter half of the game, I died a slow death listening to goal after goal on the radio. Judging by the shot total and the united front coach Pete DeBoer and the team put up after the game, it doesn’t sound like it was a matter of quitting at all. Rather, a horrendous special teams dooming the team after Quick made the offense collectively look up to the heavens and curse out the sky. Not to mention just the pure fact that right now, the Kings are the far better team. The fact that they’re now up 3-0 in their fourth straight series tells you all you need to know. I’ve seen players get in a zone but right now they’re an entire team in a zone.

Yes, we could have easily stolen Game 1 or won Game 2, but we didn’t. LA’s 15-2 in the playoffs, and have made this series exactly like their other three with top-notch goaltending and defense, coaching, and timely scoring from its top players. The latter is something we haven’t gotten in a while, much to the chagrin of DeBoer who lost his cool on a rare occasion during the postgame last night when some reporter prodded him about not getting enough from his star players. Fact is, it’s nearly impossible to win a series when your top players aren’t producing, to the point where DeBoer was literally giving the fourth line (the only line offensively that has produced over the last couple of weeks) a regular shift. Among all our thirty-goal scorers, the only one that’s even getting chances is David Clarkson, but he’s far from anyone’s first choice when it comes to having faith in someone to bury a well-placed shot.

Aside from the Kings’ dominance, right now I think this Devils team is just running on empty. Star winger Ilya Kovalchuk and puck-moving defenseman Marek Zidlicky in particular look like they’re playing hurt, with others like Patrik Elias looking lost for weeks and Zach Parise having minimal impact in too many games. As a team they showed signs of running on empty toward the end of the Ranger series truth be told, but fortunately for us after a long season, so was Henrik Lundqvist – who gave up several goals he doesn’t normally concede during those last two games. Thank goodness we found a way to get out of Game 6, otherwise we wouldn’t have had a very good chance to win Game 7 and the end of this season would feel a hundred times worse.

If this is how it has to end though, well I’ll congratulate the Kings and their long-suffering fans, without a Stanley Cup in over four decades of hockey in Southern California. Not to mention a group of terrific players who will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come. I can’t help but wonder what Philadelphia fans are thinking right now, seeing exiled centers Mike Richards and Jeff Carter both on the verge of winning the Cup now? Quick would be as deserving a Conn Smythe winner as there ever was, and after trade rumors in late February, American-born captain Dustin Brown is on the verge of getting the last laugh.

I’m not quite ready to give up the ghost yet, after all this is the same group of Devil players that made a miracle run towards the playoffs against all odds last year, winning just about every game for two months and giving us a lot of unexpected fun in a season that had started out as the worst nightmare imaginable. This team only has to win every game for the next week instead of two months to pull off a historic finish. True, it’s easier said than done against a talented, hungry team like the Kings. It’s hard to ask any more of this team than what they’ve already given. Right now all I ask is this…find some way, any way back to Newark for Game 5, so that one of two things will happen. Either the Devils can win that game and shift a mountain of pressure onto the Kings for Game 6, or the Devils don’t win and at least get to hear the fans’ well-earned appreciation for an awesome season, one that surpassed any of my wildest dreams.

Whatever happens from here in, I’m just glad I have a team to be proud of, a team I can like again. Since the lockout, the last few years have been filled with meaningless 100-point seasons with playoff runs that ended far too soon plus the disaster that was the start of the 2010-11 season under John MacLean. It can’t be forgotten that it was Jacques Lemaire who brought the pride back in Devils hockey during the second half of the season, and with each success this year I’m that much more thankful he was able to stabilize the team when it looked as if they were headed into a dark abyss. While Lemaire stabilized things last year, DeBoer has brought it to another level this year and shown he can be the guy who will lead the Devils into a post-lockout NHL finally after years of seemingly running in place and false starts.

Yes, I know 2003 wasn’t ‘that’ long away, particuarly from a sports perspective. However, it’s a long way away from a life perspective. Not to mention when you look at it in terms of seasons as opposed to years, I’ve gone through a lot as a sports fan the last number of seasons with multiple teams. I certainly don’t expect Brian or even Derek to sympathize, Brian in particular has it far worse with his Buffalo teams although at least both have the Yankees, who are seemingly always going to be an upper-echelon team. With my teams, the Mets’ heartbreaking NLCS loss in 2006 followed by historic chokes in 2007 and 2008 before going into an abyss they’ve only recently started to come out of is just part of my sports fan annoyance the last few years. There’s also the Jets’ promise of 2009 and 2010 blowing up with a dissapointing season in 2011. And the Devils’ struggles merely getting out of the first round the last few years, after being bullied by the Rangers in 2008, choking in historic fashion in 2009 against Carolina, and outright quitting against the Flyers in 2010 as well as the start of the ’10-11 season. If there’s one thing to be proud of with this team, they won’t quit. They’ve been behind in every series so far this postseason, they were on the bubble to even make the playoffs in early February, and they’ve handled adversity better than any team I’ve seen since 2003 (and that team only trailed in the playoffs once).

Maybe this season will end with just a little trophy and one new banner to see next season when I make my first trip to the Prudential Center in late September or early October. Or maybe improbably, it will end with a big trophy and two banners. Whatever happens, the 2011-12 season will be full of good memories. And astonishingly, the draft and UFA are less than a month away so before I know it I’ll be concerned about how the team will look in 2012-13. Yes, there’s still a dark cloud looming in terms of the ownership situation and what that means with re-signing captain Parise. While his production has been a dissapointment in the playoffs for the most part the last few years, he did chip in some big goals this time around, and more importantly has been the key figure in a transition from a team that just punched the clock and acted like robots without heart to one that’s willing to go balls to the wall and have fun.

Here’s to hoping that we have at least one more week of fun. This season has been too much fun to want it to ever end.