Battle Of Hudson

I honestly don’t know what to say about this team anymore, certainly nothing new that I didn’t already say after Game 3. Last night’s ‘effort’ in the last two periods of a swing Game 5 was an absolute disgrace. Other teams must look at our half-hearted play in the playoffs and sneer. You have teams like the Penguins (recent Cup winners) busting their rear end to come back from 3-0 down, Vancouver switching their goalie to try to change the momentum…and we just run in place. No lineup changes, no line changes, mistakes worthy of the District 5 hockey team – the kid Mighty Ducks from the movie that inspired the Anaheim name – and intermittent passion.

Yes, the first period was even in terms of play and fine in terms of effort but typically when the Devils took a penalty early in the second, they gave up a power play goal on a virtial 5-on-3 1/2 after the ill-fated Anton Volchenov broke his stick, and Kris Versteeg beat Martin Brodeur with an unscreened one-timer from the faceoff circle to again put the Devils behind the eight-ball. While once again the refs seemed to favor the guys in Panther shirts (as evidenced by the ‘penalties’ called on Parise and Ryan Carter), the Devils didn’t do themselves any favors by remaining undisciplined. Even Adam Henrique took a penalty – the same guy who’d taken one minor penalty the entire season, minutes after a stupid double-minor infraction by Danius Zubrus.

For once the PK didn’t completely crumble, killing off the last five chances. But that’s also time you lose trying to establish offensive rhythm, especially after falling behind. With the Panthers losing two defensemen (including pointman Jason Garrison) and changing their goalie for the second time this series, the Devils still managed to produce nothing in terms of offense. Nada, zip, zero. Yeah they were credited with thirty shots, I demand to see video evidence of at least ten of them. Certainly there weren’t a lot of quality scoring chances in the final two periods during the Devils’ latest el foldo.

The difference between the two teams right now in a nutshell is this: We choke with the lead, they remain poised when behind. Our effort is on and off like a faulty light switch, their effort has been consistent. Even during the 4-0 Game 4 they were still busting their rear end trying to get a goal on the last shift. While we can’t even be bothered to compete during a swing Game 5! Even Parise admitted as much during the postgame, that the team didn’t work hard enough. Well, you guys don’t have anything else left to wait for. We’ve been outcoached as well, with Kevin Dineen making changes that needed to be made (specifically in goal) and calling proactive timeouts, while Pete DeBoer has been…Deboring in terms of his inaction this series.

I’m not asking for Adam Larsson to be in the lineup over Volchenkov or one of the goon squad to replace any of our fourth liners (especially considering they’ve been our best line) but how about some line changes at the very least? Especially when you have a clearly gimping Ilya Kovalchuk being an anchor with Parise and Travis Zajac still getting his normal icetime despite clearly being limited physically. Even in the best of times, Kovy and Parise haven’t shown the ability to coexist consistently on the same line. During one of their better periods they had Adam Henrique center them, but DeBoer hasn’t even gone back to that line once – other than during our late Game 2 rally – and he hasn’t even considered changing since then.

This isn’t a coaching thing though, this group of players has to take ownership and say enough is enough. Before someone on high says it for them and shows them the door out of town. Whether that someone is Lou Lamoriello, owner Jeff Vanderbeek or someone else once the dust settles, there’s a lot riding on the remainder of this series. Being on the brink of losing a series at home for the fourth straight time (every single one of them where they had more points than their opponent in the regular season) shows that something about this team is fundamentally flawed.

If what I expect to happen in Game 6 does, this team needs to be gutted. If that means Lou, Parise, Marty all go – so be it. Yes, things could get worse. I acknowledge the possibility exists we’ll have five playoffless seasons in a row if we blow it up. There’s also a possibility change will be for the better (look at the Flyers, after they blew up their team last offseason). But this team just cannot waste any more time running in place. You risk becoming like the Sharks, or the late ’90’s Blues, teams that are satisfied with just making the playoffs and are content hoping for things to be different with the same group even when too much evidence exists that they won’t be.

When you have guys like Marty acknowledging that we ‘didn’t expect to be tested this early’ or Parise admitting their effort in a swing Game 5 wasn’t there, that should be enough of an indicator that this group is not and will never win anything of significance. If they’re too stupid to give effort after three straight first-round defeats on home ice, following the shame that was their first half last year, there really isn’t much left to say for them. They have one last chance to make things right, but to do that they have to win two consecutive playoff games, something that this team hasn’t done since 2007. I don’t expect it to happen now either.

Down 2-1 against the Panthers after a potentially soul-crushing Game 3 defeat, the Devils knew they needed a few things to happen to turn the series around. Martin Brodeur had to be better than he was for the first three games, particularly Tuesday night when he got pulled in a tie game with a series of bad goals. Our vaunted PK had to pick it up and start killing penalties at closer to 80 or 90% efficiency as opposed to the 40% of the first three games. And our offensive stars like Zach Parise and Ilya Kovalchuk needed to start getting on the board more frequently.

All of those factors came together in Game 4, as the Devils finally played a complete sixty-minute game in a 4-0 win that wasn’t quite as convincing as the score would suggest, but was still satisfying in every way. Brodeur responded to adversity the way he has so many times before, with a twenty-six save shutout. Parise and Kovalchuk each contributed goals (as did linemate Travis Zajac), with the captain even leading the team in hits as well. And our struggling PK finally looked more like it did in the regular season – giving the Panthers an 0-fer on five power play chances…though admittedly the loss of Panthers defenseman Jason Garrison and his 100 MPH slapshot due to an unspecified lower body injury helped that last stat.

Early on, it was hard to tell which way this game was going as both teams played a bit more open than they wanted to with goalies Brodeur and Scott Clemmensen making a couple of good saves each. At least the Devils’ early hitting (including a freight train hit by Stephen Gionta on the much bigger Jerrod Smithson) set a tone that last night was going to be different effort-wise at least. Parise had several early hits too, yet joked his dad who was in attendance must have been keeping score when told he led the team in that category.

Still, the game was scoreless after one and we hadn’t yet come close to solving Clemmensen after his spotless nineteen-save relief appearance against the Devils in Game 3 and unbeaten record against us during the regular season. Ironically, after all the worrying about the Panthers’ power play in this series, it was our own man advantage that finally broke the ice in the second period with a perfect Parise deflection off a Zajac shot. Parise’s second goal in the series (both at home) came at 6:08 with the assists going to Zajac and Marek Zidlicky. Getting an early lead was ideal but hardly satisfying after the Devils nearly blew a three-goal lead in Game 1 and took less than fifteen minutes to waste a similar cushion in Game 3. However, the Devils played much better defensively in a second period where each team only got seven shots, and that 1-0 scoreline remained until the third.

After being even in shots through two periods with the slimmest of leads, the Devils finally broke the game open in the third period with yet another goal from the fourth line. Junior Gio made a great play to get the puck in the zone and feed it to Steve Bernier, who roofed a glove-side beauty past Clemmensen at 2:02 to provide some breathing room. Bernier’s goal was the third scored by that line in this series – one each by Gionta, Bernier and Ryan Carter. This, after a season where the fourth line was among our biggest issues and junior Gio was an afterthought down in Albany until Jacob Josefson‘s 94th injury prompted a callup. Brodeur also contributed to the offense with his second assist of the series on Bernier’s goal.

With heroic play from the fourth line amping up the sellout crowd again, the first line kept up the momentum just ninety-three seconds later, with a little help from David Clarkson. Clarkson made an unbelievable play – especially for him, skating into the zone solo from center ice, circling the net, then finding a wide open Zajac just outside the shot for a high one-timer past Clemmensen to give us the worst lead in hockey. I’ve always mocked that expression from Stan Fischler, but it’s been frighteningly true in this series. Clearly the only solution was to get a fourth goal, which Kovalchuk did as the Devils converted on another power play at 8:32 to finally put the game on ice. Fill-in Peter Harrold got an assist on Kovy’s second of the series and unbelievably, stay-at-home defenseman Bryce Salvador got his second assist of the game and third of the series on Kovy’s goal.

At this point in the game, the physical play got dialed up a notch with the teams combining for twenty-six penalty minutes, including a ten-minute misconduct by Clarkson in the last minute of the game. Granted, you get those kinds of totals when someone breathes the wrong way in Pennsylvania, but in what’s been a tame series thus far compared to almost everything else around the league this represented a step up. Florida proved they weren’t backing down, and neither did we, finally showing a little killer instinct and not letting them get any life. Our crowd was similarly ruthless, chanting ‘You’re a backup!’ towards former friend Clemmensen late in the game. For his part, before the game Clemmensen said he still loved Devils fans, no matter how loud we booed him. Hey, all’s fair in love and playoff hockey right?

As happy as I was about last night and finally solving Clemmensen, all this game did was give us a stay of execution and prove we have no business losing this series if we play sixty minutes and Marty/our penalty kill play up to form. Another bone of contention going into this game was defenseman Anton Volchenkov, who’d been on the ice for nine of the Panthers’ ten goals in the first three games and directly responsible for at least a couple of them. Not only did he look slow and still bothered by the late-season ‘flu’, but he was also playing fewer minutes (around twelve per game). He still didn’t look like the old Anton last night, but at least he played over sixteen minutes and finished with a +2.

Perhaps the best thing out of Games 3 and 4 was the crowd. I had a headache after Game 3 but figured it was because of my own screaming, after I lost it the way I never lost it at a game before. However, I had a headache in Game 4 too and didn’t have nearly as much stress over this one. Whether it was because of the amped up PR system or the actual crowd itself I still can’t tell, but either way having a sellout crowd of 17,625 for two mid-week first-round games with the Panthers was a good sign. Especially with the late college night promos selling out the remaining tickets and getting louder fans into the building.

Granted, some of the stuff at games during this series has been kind of hokey, like PR announcer Kevin Clark telling us to stand up and shout – there’s one minute remaining on the penalty kill and things like that (particularly in Game 3, which became kind of amusing given the circumstance…last night the PR guy wasn’t nearly as omnipresent). Yet as much as we might think it sounds college-like, it works for this crowd, which has a lot of younger fans to begin with. And the Devils gave a nod to the old-timers by using the CAA goalhorn for Game 3. Evidently, superstition kicked in after we lost that game coupled with the Retro Night loss with the old goalhorn, and we went back to the current one in Game 4 but it was still a nice touch, as was the intro video – which also had a little of everything in it.

Although last night was a good start, this team needs to finish the job now. Starting Saturday in Florida would be a good thing, since a win there would prevent a possible home elimination Tuesday. This team should know what it needs to do, it just needs to do it now.

I sit here now, knowing I’m in for a night of little sleep unsure how to start this post after the disgraceful horror show I just witnessed at the Rock. I never thought I could ever feel worse than after Game 7 against Carolina in 2009, but this abomination of a game topped that one – at least for sheer anger and frustration. Quite possibly the only time I’ve ever been as upset at any sporting event (and I wasn’t in the stands for this one, unlike tonight) was when the Mets spit it up in the final two and a half weeks of the 2007 season, culminating with future HOF’er Tom Glavine giving up seven runs in the first inning.

In a way, Martin Brodeur suffered a similar fate to Glavine tonight, turning in a performance that will forever (barring a Lazarus-like rise from the dead the rest of the series) mar his great career. With the Devils holding a 3-0 lead after a remarkable first 6:16 of the game, all Brodeur had to do was be average and he could have taken this game home. Not only wasn’t he average, he gave by far the worst performance I’ve ever seen from him in a big game – yes even worse than the aformentioned Game 7 against Carolina.

After failing to control a long dump-in by Scottie Upshall, Brodeur gave up a bad shortside goal to Sean Bergenheim at 16:11. Yes, it was another power play goal given up by the ‘greatest PK of all time’ but that one was all on Brodeur from start to finish. And Brodeur gave up yet another questionable power play goal with just eight seconds remaining in the period on a long slapshot by Jason Garrison (granted, he has a hard slapshot but still). That second goal deflated me and at least half the building, including the players in the locker room according to our wonderful leader, Zach Parise.

If it were any other goalie in net, I suspect Brodeur would have been pulled – the way Jose Theodore was after giving up those three early goals in favor of Devil-killer Scott Clemmensen. He wasn’t however, and the team paid for it when Brodeur gave up yet another horrendous goal shortside to the immortal Mike Weaver at 2:18 of the second period, officially making what looked like an insurmountable lead after a dominant start dissapear. Finally, Brodeur was pulled to nobody’s surprise but Brodeur himself. Even that couldn’t stop the sudden Panther onslaught however, as they got their third power play goal of the game and sixth of the series when Brian Campbell beat Johan Hedberg off a rebound, after Hedberg had made some good saves to temporarily stop the bleeding.

Brodeur’s performance certainly doesn’t take the rest of these gutless, pathetic losers off the hook though. There’s absolutely no excuse for – as Captain America put it – the team to be going into the locker room feeling like they were losing when it was 3-2 at the end of the first. I felt like that as a fan, but it’s these guys’ jobs NOT to give into that. From the time Clemmensen came in till about the final two minutes of the game, the Devils got maybe twelve-fifteen shots on net with only a couple of real quality scoring chances. There’s no excuse for guys like Ilya Kovalchuk to keep being lazy or tired (the latter is possible with how much he’s been overplayed this season and in the series), and no excuse for guys like Peter Harrold to think he’s Wayne Gretzky and make five moves when he had a wide-open chance in the slot, but held the puck for too long and the chance died.

Yes, the refs didn’t help out and were awful too, disallowing an apparent tying goal by Marek Zidlicky late in the second period after it was ruled Steve Bernier made incidental contact with Clemmensen – which he did, after a Florida defenseman pushed him into the goalie. That was just the worst, and last in a series of whistles which didn’t go the Devils way, either via missed penalties on the Panthers or bad penalties called on them. Normally I only hear the kind of booing the refs got tonight from other teams’ crowds. Honestly, the refs were in the wrong place at the wrong time to a degree…but I still don’t want to see Tim Peel and his crew for the rest of the playoffs either.

I’m certainly not letting the coaching staff slide on this one. How does a penalty kill that broke records in the regular season all of a sudden become staggeringly inept in the postseason? Florida’s now an unreal 6 for 8 on the power play in the three games. Even with Brodeur’s bad goaltending in this series, the Panthers haven’t done much at even strength, but the same penalty killers who got the job time and again in the regular season haven’t been able to kill a single penalty when it matters. Not to mention Pete DeBoer refused to go back to the line combinations that worked well late in Game 3, even when the team struggled to create anything for more than fifty minutes after their unreal start. If the players were feeling defeated, as Parise said – then the coaching staff didn’t do their job of getting the players back into the game mentally.

DeBoer’s most questionable move so far may be his decision to go back to Brodeur for Game 4 with Brodeur having a terrible series and Hedberg being about the only one who looked like he wanted to compete in the latter half of the game, until the final two minutes where they finally stirred to life with a couple of chances, but it was too little and too late. If this series is about winning then Hedberg should play, he’s earned it with both his stature and his recent results even while playing second fiddle to Brodeur. Clearly however, starting Game 4 is as much about restoring Marty’s legacy as anything else.

Well here it is Marty, if you want one last chance to prove you’re not just a creature of a HOF-laden defense prior to the lockout, it starts Thursday. If Zach wants to prove he’s a great leader and deserves the millions he’s going to get this offseason he’ll find a way to get to the guys in the room. If DeBoer really is a long-term coach for this team, he’ll get his message across and that won’t come by giving them a day off this time. If this team wants to prove they aren’t a bunch of gutless, pathetic losers, well time is running out on that one.

After a road Game 1 win, the Devils’ momentum from being ahead in the series lasted precisely twenty-three seconds last night. That’s how long it took for Andy Greene to take a dumb penalty and the Devils’ GREAT PENALTY KILL to give up their second power-play goal in the series and go behind when long-time Panther Stephen Weiss scored off a rebound. Ironically, the second period started in a similar fashion after late first-period penalties by Alexei Ponikarovsky and David Clarkson on the same shift gave the Panthers a full two-minute five-on-three. And again, they took advantage when Weiss scored off a rebound at 1:12 of the second period.

While the Panthers’ power play was cashing in goal after goal, the Devils power play was so clueless in its two chances, you wondered if the improvement they’d shown the last fifty games was all a dream. I’m more used to a bad power play though, the fact that a penalty kill that set a modern regular season record – killing almost 90% of penalties with a ton of shorthanded goals, to boot…is now 2-5 (that’s a 40% rate) at killing off penalties for the series is mind-boggling. Special teams and a lack of passion in the first forty minutes doomed us to an almost insurmountable 3-0 hole after two, and eventual defeat.

Yes, I figured the Panthers would come out better in this game and probably win. And my pre-series prediction was Devils in six, so I didn’t expect it to be a walkover. But I expected us to win in part, because I didn’t see us making the mistakes of the past and giving away games, taking teams lightly. The Devils’ effort (or lack thereof) in the first forty minutes was mind-boggling. It was so bad, even coach Pete DeBoer – usually known for his patience and understatedness in the postgame – could barely hide his disdain over the first forty minutes. Look no further than mercurial Ilya Kovalchuk for an indication of the lack of effort, as he got beaten to the puck by a 900-year old John Madden and nearly gave up one shorthanded chance, then gave up another shorthanded chance when Marcel Goc juked him out of his skates.

I thought this team was beyond games like this in the playoffs, I really did. After three straight first-round losses followed by the disaster that was last year, the fact that you would even come out lacksadaical in one playoff game is mind-boggling. Last night’s game reminded me of Games 4 and 6 in Carolina in 2009, where each time the Devils had a chance to take control of, or win the series and pulled a complete no-show in the first two periods. Clearly the Panthers have proved that the four close regular season games aren’t a fluke and that you can’t go half-speed to beat them – in a playoff game, much less.

In the first twenty minutes, the two teams combined for just seven shots. Clearly Florida wanted to avoid another first-period meltdown the way they did Friday night. To go from allowing twenty-six shots in the first period to allowing four, well that isn’t all just the other team improving. I don’t quite know what we were doing or where our head was at with some of these stupid penalties. Not to mention dumb decisions, like in the second period when Anton Volchenkov let Goc dipsy-doo at the side of the net and use him as a screen for a bad goal that somehow trickled through Martin Brodeur at 14:39 of the second, bulging the Panthers’ lead to three.

Volchenkov himself is a concern too, he was sat the last game of the season due to the ‘flu’ but after an eight-day rest, he’s only played south of twelve minutes a night in the first two playoff games. This, after some strong late-season play. So clearly something’s still not right there, and Volchenkov’s injury issue is definitely affecting the PK, among other things. Not to mention the guy who’s usually doing the hitting has been getting hit on more than one occasion this series. Don’t believe the hit numbers from the Florida rink, the Devils as a team really weren’t hitting the first two periods last night.

As a whole, the defense has been a dissapointment so far other than the third period of Game 1…they have let the Panthers’ top line keep running riot just like in the regular season, and if you can’t stop a one-line team’s one line, you’re in a world of trouble. With Kris Versteeg scoring in the first game, followed by Weiss’s two goals last night, the top line has put up three of the Panthers’ five goals in the first two games – granted, all have been on the power play but hey, we’re supposed to have a great PK, right?

There’s a reason I’ve waited this long before even mentioning the third period…it only served to annoy me more about the first two. Amazingly, Kovalchuk and Travis Zajac wiped out almost all of the three-goal deficit inside of two minutes, with Zajac scoring after 48 seconds and Kovy scoring 2:01 into the third period. And Panther coach Kevin Dineen had already used his timeout, arrogantly calling one at 2-0 after the Panthers had a couple of subpar shifts in the second. Despite constant pressure with twelve shots in the third period though, the tying goal remained just out of reach the rest of the night. Whether it was Kovy putting a rebound just wide of an open-net or Zach Parise missing in close time and again, the final twenty minutes just added more frustration on an already annoying night.

After a six-day wait to start their first-round series, the Devils came out like caged beasts ready to wreak havoc and destruction, scoring the game’s first three goals and outshooting the Panthers by an unreal 26-9 margin in the opening twenty minutes. By the time the game was over however, the Devils once again got the lesson hammered home that very little comes easy in the postseason – barely avoiding disaster by holding on for a 3-2 win in Game 1, relieving nervous Devils fans everywhere after a bad second period and dissapointing a Panthers crowd that was anxious to see its first postseason game in twelve years.

This wasn’t just a case of a game having three periods worth of ebb and flow, but the three periods themselves all seemed to be three different games. Normally, I’d be at home watching this game but I was actually at the Prudential Center, thanks to my friend who won access to a special viewing party with free food (pasta, hot dogs, nachos and supposedly chicken fingers though I didn’t see them) and soft drinks. With the game being shown on the jumbotron as well as the inordinate number of TV’s around the Acela Club, everyone had a good view of the Devils’ first playoff game.

Although I make no bones of the fact I was confident we should win this series, I really didn’t know how the first game would go. If anything, I thought Florida would be the team with a ton of early momentum thanks to a home crowd starved for playoff hockey, but instead a well-rested Devils team overwhelmed the home side in the first twenty minutes. Ironically, after all the pregame speculation on whether Jose Theodore or Scott Clemmensen would start in goal for the Panthers, coach Kevin Dineen stuck with Theodore – and the one-time NHL Hart Trophy winner kept his team in it despite a barrage of chances from anywhere and everywhere in the first period.

It took us fourteen shots to finally get on the board, but when we did it was a beauty courtesy of Patrik Elias, who made a series of moves at the side of the net – finally getting Theodore to drop to the ice and beating him with a wicked short-side shot that got the Devils on the board at 6:31. Although Danius Zubrus and Bryce Salvador got assists on the goal, that was all Patrik at his best – and the veteran Czech gained instant redemption after Theodore had stoned him on a breakaway minutes earlier.

Following a double minor high-sticking penalty by Shawn Matthias, the Devils peppered the net on the ensuing four-minute power play, finally getting a second goal on another beautiful play started by goalie Martin Brodeur, who found an open David Clarkson with a pass 150 feet away at the other blueline. Then, Clarkson found Zubrus with a nifty little pass of his own, and Zubrus did the rest – beating Theodore on a mini-breakaway at 14:11. Almost as if emotionaly stunned by that goal, the Panthers immediately gave up another goal 45 seconds later when Ryan Carter gained the zone and managed to beat Theodore with a wrister glove-side that put the Devils up by a whopping three goals. Ironically, Carter started the season as a Panther, but was picked up off waivers by the Devils a couple months into the season and wound up stinging his former mates.

At this point, Dineen called timeout and I thought might even pull Theodore but he sent a message loud and clear that Theodore was his guy by leaving him in there, and to his credit he did stem the tide after that, making 23 saves in that first period and finishing with 35 stops on the night. After the first period, things couldn’t have looked better and the Devils did start out the second as if they wanted to finish things off but eventually the tide turned, and after Sean Bergenheim blew by Anton Volchenkov and scored 7:44 into the second, momentum shifted. While the Devils did get a majority of the power plays on the night (six, including the double-minor to just two for the Panthers) the Panthers did make the most of one of their opportunities at 15:42 when Kris Versteeg somehow stuffed one through Brodeur to cut the lead to one, and give Devil fans scary flashbacks.

After all, Versteeg had only scored four goals against the Devils in the teams’ four regular season matchups, but more chillingly, arguably the Devils’ worst loss in the season came in Florida when they blew a 3-0 lead. There were definitely some stress-raising moments in the second period as the Devils nearly lost the entire lead before intermission mercifully came. At that point, the Devils did play better in the third period, only allowing the Panthers a handful of shots and maybe one or two real scoring chances.

About the only thing I didn’t like in the third period was the Devils playing it conservative on the power play with less than five minutes left, using two defensemen at the point. Not that I can blame coach Pete DeBoer entirely, with the memory fresh in mind of our fifteen or so shorthanded goals allowed this season, but still I didn’t have the confidence in the Devils to hold a one-goal lead sitting on it and the power play doesn’t know what to do with themselves when we do put two defensemen on the point. However, they did hold it and finally sealed a victory that looked certain after twenty minutes – giving Brodeur his 100th career playoff win (second only to Patrick Roy).

Oh, and the viewing party? It was supposed to be attended by a hundred Devil fans who could bring a guest, so two hundred was the book number. However, it definitely looked like more than two hundred were there. Even the security guards were commenting on it as me and my friend were waiting to go in, and one of the vice presidents or COO’s of ticket operations addressed the crowd during the first intermission and said that 98% of people who printed out a ticket came (supposedly an unheard of percentage, according to this guy who’s worked with other teams before and done similar types of viewing parties).

Bear in mind, all of us who won the chance to go to this viewing party only got notice of it 24 hours before the game. In fact my friend didn’t remember entering the contest at all, and she had to ask me if the e-mail she got was real lol. It was certainly worth going though, the only expense was paying for the $5 parking at the garage in the arena, and my friend buying an $8 glass of wine at the bar. We even got extra team posters that were left over from Fan Appreciation Day and took a few. Although we didn’t get in early enough to get a ledge seat by the scoreboard, we had a good view of one of the TV’s and eventually as some of the crowd cleared out, we did watch the final few minutes on the jumbotron at the Prudential Center. And yes, they played the goal horn when we scored and when we won, though it didn’t come with the Rock and Roll Part 2 goal song like it would for an actual home game.