Battle Of Hudson

Some people look at the turn of the new year as the second part of the NHL season, others point to the All-Star game as the point where things start turning serious. However, the 41st game of the season is the true halfway point for each team and right now things couldn’t be more different for the Devils compared to last year. The halfway point in early January last season represented the lowest ebb of the Devils’ season as they finished 10-29-2, leaving them twenty-seven points out of a playoff spot. This year however, the Devils are 23-16-2 and in fifth place of a competitive Eastern Conference – including a 10-4-1 stretch in their last fifteen games after their second 3-1 win over the Penguins in eight days.

As was the case last Saturday in New Jersey, the Devils’ best players again played key roles in the win, led by Martin Brodeur who turned back the clock with a 41-save performance, allowing only Evgeni Malkin‘s first period goal at 4:48. After Malkin opened the scoring, the first period went downhill from there as the Devils went nine minutes without getting a shot and were outshot 12-3 in the opening twenty minutes. Fortunately they managed to escape the first still down only one, though James Neal tried to push one in off his hand but the refs disallowed the goal. Neal’s attempted chicanery came just moments after Pete DeBoer had used his timeout because the Devils were getting dominated to such an extent, however the turnaround wouldn’t come until the second period.

In a wild second period where each team managed to get seventeen shots on net, the Devils came out the better team early but the game didn’t truly turn until a dumb Eric Boulton interference penalty left the Devils shorthanded. As the saying goes, a tiger’s most dangerous when it’s wounded. This Devils team is most dangerous when down a man, and sure enough Adam Henrique would get a breakaway courtesy of a Zach Parise pass and cash it in at 8:39 to tie the game. That goal showed the rook’s determination, since watching the game I threw my head back when Marc-Andre Fleury made the intial save on the breakaway thinking he had it. However, Henrique kept buzzing and found the rebound by Fleury’s left pad, stuffing it in.

There turned out to be an additional complication though, as the ref’s whistle apparently blew just before the goal…seems the refs were paying about as much attention as I was. However, it sounded like the whistle only half-tweeted before the goal, and fully blew just after it and the refs eventually upheld the goal that tied the game. Moments later Ilya Kovalchuk nearly had another shorthanded breakaway goal, but Fleury did stop this one. Kovalchuk wouldn’t have to wait long to get another chance though, and he would convert on it, cranking a slapshot home from the blueline at 11:23 to give the Devils the lead. Linemates Parise and Henrique each got an assist on Kovy’s fifteenth goal of the year.

Now it was Dan Bylsma‘s turn to take timeout and try to change the momentum. And to their credit, the Penguins did pick it up but Brodeur was equal to the task, making a bunch of good saves including a stop on Chris Kunitz‘s one-timer just before the second period buzzer went off. Up 2-1, the Devils wanted to do something they rarely do – put the game away with another goal. During the whole season, the Devils have had their share of third period leads but only once have actually added to it…against Dallas on Niedermayer Night. Usually that has to do with a terrible power play that not only can’t put teams away but usually keeps other teams in games with horrendous breakdowns.

Last night would be different however, as the Devils took advantage of an early power play to extend their lead after some nice passing from Kovy and Patrik Elias led to a tap-in goal by Danius Zubrus at 1:28. Zubrus’s 12th of the year doubled the Devils’ lead and for once, there was no third-period dramatics though they had to kill off a penalty after Henrik Tallinder threw one over the glass later in the period. Pittsburgh did get another thirteen shots on Brodeur in the third, but the NHL’s all-time wins leader was equal to the task against a Pens team missing forwards Sidney Crosby and Jordan Staal along with defenseman Kris Letang.

After the buzzer sounded on the first half of the Devils’ season they headed to Western Canada for three games next week – at Calgary Tuesday, Edmonton Wednesday and Winnipeg Saturday. Brodeur’s win last night gave him a victory in his 49th different NHL arena, since he’d only started once before in the Consol Energy Center and lost a shootout. He can run that total to an even 50 if he wins in the new Jets’ arena next weekend. Following the game against Winnipeg though, the Devils will return home for the rest of the month – playing their next six games at the Prudential Center (with the All-Star break in between).

Pretty much the main concern for the team right now is the injury situation, with centers Travis Zajac and Jacob Josefson still out, along with forwards Anton Volchenkov and Andy Greene. Ostensibly the first three are all close to a return, but who really knows with the Devils? Volchenkov did get put on IR yesterday, but is still eligible to return at the start of the Devils’ Canada swing.

Even without their full lineup however, the Devils are proving more and more by the game that last year was the exception and this could very well be a playoff team again.

After a terrible start to the new year, blowing another two-goal lead Monday in Ottawa before losing in OT and then getting waxed by the Bruins 6-1 at home Wednesday, the Devils needed a win badly last night with a tough four-game road trip looming on the horizon. As usual it was a five-siren game, with blown leads and head-scratching mistakes before the Devils finally broke a 2-2 tie for good with the first of Ilya Kovalchuk‘s two goals at 11:40 of the third period. For once, the Devils not only managed to hold a lead but also extend it with two empty-netters in the final minute, scored by Kovy and Zach Parise to give each their 14th goal of the season and account for the final 5-2 margin.

Going into last night’s game there were two fascinating subplots, one involving Patrik Elias, who was playing his 1000th NHL game last night. Although the accomplishment was acknowledged in the middle of the first period, he’ll formally be honored by the team and the NHL before the Devils’ next home game – on the 17th against Winnipeg. The other subplot involved the newest Panther…John Madden, who had remained unsigned until coming to terms with the Panthers days ago on a $600k deal, and his first game (wearing an unfamiliar #10) was ironically enough against his long-time former team last night. Madden did get a nice ovation before the game, as did Elias during it.

Early on, things were looking good as the Devils outshot Florida 13-6 in the first period and got on the board early against Jakob Markstrom at 3:59, when Parise found Calder candidate Adam Henrique in front, where all he had to do was make a quick move and beat the Panthers goaltender for his tenth score of the season. Yet, despite the early good signs the Devils would only exit the first period tied after a series of ill-fated pinch attempts led to a two-on-one for the Panthers, and when Marcel Goc found an open Mikael Samuelsson you could have guessed the result. Sure enough, Samuelsson beat Johan Hedberg for only his second goal of the season at 7:33 to tie the game.

However, just thirty-six seconds into the second period, the Devils grabbed the lead again through an inspired Elias. After being teed up by Henrik Tallinder, Elias cranked a one-time slapshot through traffic and past Markstrom to give the Devils’ all time offensive leader his fourteenth goal of 2011-12. Tallinder and fellow defenseman Mark Fayne got the assists on Elias’s goal, which gave the Devils a lead they kept…for a whole two minutes and ten seconds. This time it was the ill-fated fourth line of Cam Janssen, Eric Boulton and Ryan Carter that screwed up, slow to arrive in a play that developed into a four-on-two, with Krys Barch slipping a wrister through Hedberg’s legs to tie it again. Honestly, I love Cam and he’d have a place if he was the only enforcer but how many games of two minutes TOI and -1 do we have to go through before Pete DeBoer realizes playing two no-talent goons is just not viable in today’s NHL?

Part of the problem right now is the Devils continue to be bitten by the injury bug. Travis Zajac is again on the shelf, this time due to achilles soreness, the same achilles he tore in the offseason. Allegedly, this is minor but I don’t consider any injury that forces you to miss multiple games and is in the same area where you had major surgery anything ‘minor’. Not only is Zajac out, but defenseman Anton Volchenkov also missed his second consecutive game due to ‘lower body soreness’. At least Jacob Josefson‘s getting closer, being mentioned on the scratch list again and even subbing in as the team’s sixth defenseman in practice (sadly, he would be better there than some of our actual defenseman). Also, talented but struggling forward Mattias Tedenby was a healthy scratch last night for the faceless Steve Zalewski. With Zalewski and Tim Sestito part of the Devils’ third line, the team just has too many bodies in the lineup that don’t belong in the league right now.

Fortunately the Devils’ top line would pick it up after a hairy second period which included near misses by Madden and Kris Versteeg, the latter being somewhat comical as Versteeg broke his stick over his knee after missing an open net on a play where Hedberg was flopping all over the place. After plenty of anxious moments throughout most of the second and the first half of the third periods, the Devils finally got back in front again when Elias found Kovy with a gorgeous feed and Kovy directed the puck past Markstrom to give the Devils their third lead of the night. Thankfully the third time proved the charm in holding a lead although a delay of game penalty on Parise led to a real scary final three minutes, with the Devils’ best PK’er in the box.

Despite not having Parise, the best PK unit in the league did their job and even extended the lead when the Panthers pulled Markstrom and Bryce Salvador‘s chip out of the zone found an open Kovy who streaked past the D and slipped it into the open net with a minute remaining, providing this blogger a huge sigh of relief. Matt Taormina and Henrique also put up secondary assists on the Kovy goals. Elias would complete his great night, finding Parise for another empty-netter (with help from another secondary assist by Danius Zubrus), a rarity for a Devils team that usually doesn’t even find the empty net once!

Notes: After I got home last night, I read the somewhat surprising (or not) news that the NHLPA had rejected the NHL’s highly publicized realignment plan for next year. Even though I had my issues with the new format of four ‘conferences’, the fact that the NHLPA cited travel – which was supposed to be made better by this – as their reason for rejecting it is comical and a bit disingenous. With Donald Fehr at the helm, it looks like the latest NHLPA-NHL war everyone feared is going to come to fruition with this rejection the first shot across the bow. I would have felt a lot better or at least not cared as much about the rejection if it wasn’t directly related to the new CBA and the kind of approach the revamped NHLPA’s going to take with this labor negotiation.

Although the Devils aren’t even halfway through the NHL season yet, in a sense their 3-1 win over the Penguins on New Year’s Eve did close a successful chapter as they finished 2011 with nine wins in twelve games. Overall, 2011 proved to be a gigantic improvement on 2010. Between the latter part of the ’09-10 season and the ill-fated beginning to last season, the Devils were 30-42-8 with 68 points in 80 games during 2010. With their revival in the second half of last season combined with a plus .500 start this year, the Devils finished 2011 with a 49-29-4 record and 102 points.

That difference represents quite the turnaround for this Devils team, who ended 2010 on the lowest of notes, in last place in the NHL and with once-popular Devil (and longtime assistant) John MacLean getting the ax just 33 games into his coaching tenure. This year’s Devils are 21-15-1 and moving up in the standings fast, with a team that’s getting healthier by the day – although they got a scare when defenseman Anton Volchenkov left yesterday’s game late in the first period and didn’t return. Ostensibly he won’t be out too long, but Matt Taormina did a good job filling in for Henrik Tallinder when he missed six games due to back spasms, so he’ll be counted on to step in if Volchenkov misses any time.

Among the regulars only Andy Greene and Jacob Josefson remain on the shelf, with Josefson having made significant progress from a serious collarbone injury, and the latest is he’s expected to accompany the team on their Western Canada swing next week, with an eye on returning then. Greene might come back closer to the All-Star break but otherwise the pieces are starting to come together with Travis Zajac now four games into his return from achilles surgery.

Other than good health, the team has more reasons to be optomistic about what lies ahead in 2012. Rookie Adam Henrique, former A-line star turned camp tryout Petr Sykora and fellow vets David Clarkson and Danius Zubrus have all provided welcome and somewhat unexpected contributions. All Henrique has done is put up 28 points in 34 games with a +7, after coming into the season with exactly one game of NHL experience. Clarkson – after a couple of dissapointing seasons – is surprisingly tied for the team lead in goals with thirteen, with Sykora and Zubrus also chipping in ten to this point.

Those four, along with team leaders Zach Parise, Ilya Kovalchuk and Patrik Elias have given the Devils an NHL-high seven double-digit goal scorers. A nearly ageless Elias leads the team with 34 points in 36 games, having made a full-time switch to center this season. After slow starts, Parise and Kovy have each picked it up, with the captain tallying 7 goals and 10 assists in fourteen December games – and best news of all may be that the clock’s started again on a potential long-term contract negotiation. Kovy has put up ninteen points in his last sixteen games, and may finally be on the way to silencing his critics once and for all, especially with more games like Saturday’s. All Kovy did was put up three points including a spectacular penalty shot goal in the first period, as the Devils squeaked out a game against a stubborn Penguins team.

Defensively it hasn’t been as pretty at times but things could be worse, if Bryce Salvador wasn’t playing some of his best hockey as a Devil the last few weeks and Mark Fayne hadn’t come out of nowhere last year to become not only a blueline regular, but one that frequently gets used against other team’s top scorers. At times vets Tallinder, Volchenkov and Greene have been shaky, along with new acquisition Kurtis ‘The Statue’ Foster but all are capable of better play in the second half, especially once they become more acclimated to coach Pete DeBoer‘s system. Last but not least, teen sensation Adam Larsson has alternately defied the skeptics by becoming a regular (and playing big minutes) as a teenage rookie, but also showed why he’s a teen at times with mistakes that the team’s just going to have to live with. For what it’s worth, Larsson is already the team’s leading point-getter from the blueline – granted with just thirteen in 35 games, and he’s been taken off the power play to focus on his five-on-five game.

In goal it’s been a bit of a mixed bag with Martin Brodeur finally showing signs of recovering from a nightmarish injury-marred start to 2011-12 in his last few starts, holding both the Sabres and Penguins to one goal apiece. He was rooked out of a star yesterday afternoon, but during his own interview for MSG+ at center ice after the game, Kovy gave Marty his due props for a strong 29-save performance against the Pens. For the most part, Johan Hedberg has been strong again as the Devils’ backup/injury fill in and his stats are still a lot better than Marty’s, though his last few outings haven’t quite been up to early season standards.

As far as DeBoer and the system, it’s been a mixed bag so far. Clearly the team is finally attempting to break the mold of its pre-lockout thinking of trap, checking line and playing in one half of the rink with a more up-tempo system – changes I think were overdue, especially with the lack of defensemen that could execute the old style system. Analyst Pierre McGuire couldn’t emphasize enough how much he liked our new system in a recent VERSUS telecast. However breaking in a new system and shelving old methods of thinking haven’t come without growing pains. For every game the team’s come back from two and even three goals down in, they’ve also give up multiple two and three-goal leads. Special teams has also emphasized the mixed bag of the new system, as the Devils have become shorthanded terrors when on the penalty kill, but a power play disaster when it comes to both scoring and giving up shorthanded goals.

My only real problem with DeBoer so far has been his insistence of doubling up on enforcers, frequently dressing both Eric Boulton and Cam Janssen, but that’s really a bit of a nitpick since the fourth line isn’t going to win or lose us too many games this year. Thankfully, with some of the regulars that have come back in recent weeks the icetime of our top players has been cut down from ridiculous to ‘normal’ top player levels. I’ve liked his use of timeouts for the most part, though his timeout yesterday in the midst of a penalty kill was a bit puzzling – and soon after the Penguins scored their only goal to cut our lead to 2-1.

All in all though, things are looking up for the Devils as 2012 begins. With young players like Henrique, Larsson and Fayne playing key roles along with a solid core of vets and role players, this version of the Devils may just get back to the playoffs after missing last year for the first time in fifteen years. What this team could do in the big dance is anyone’s guess, it’d depend on a lot of factors – such as how Marty’s playing, how much the defense progresses and whether the offense can keep putting up points at the rate it’s been doing so lately. Not to mention whether the team makes any big deadline deals and how that affects the team.

For years, me and most Devil fans have made fun of the ‘reunion tour’ around here, as GM Lou Lamoriello has brought back former Devil after former Devil with limited success the second time around. Alexander Mogilny, Jason Arnott and Bobby Holik are all guys who had success as a Devil and helped win Cups – but returned long after their prime and were frustrating to watch…and we’re not even getting into the Vlad Malakhov situation.

Then came Petr Sykora – whose departure back in 2002 was more contentious than most of the above, but whose return this year has been a far bigger feel-good story. After being out of the league for a year and not doing very much since the lockout, Sykora wasn’t expected to stick when the Devils offered him a tryout contract. However, putting on the red and white has rejuvanated his career as he not only made the team, but has become an impact player playing left wing next to his old buddy Patrik Elias.

Last night’s game against the Sabres provided a return to the good old days, as Sykora scored twice, Martin Brodeur made twenty-two saves in a solid performance and the Devils for once avoided a drama-free third period, winning 3-1 in a workmanlike performance. New Jersey’s win upped their record to 20-15-1, gave the Devils their seventh win in ten games and moved them up to sixth in the East.

Nostalgia got off to a good early start midway through the first when Brodeur’s clearing pass found a streaking Elias, who dropped the puck off to Sykora. Sykora then slithered one through Ryan Miller‘s pads for his ninth goal of the year. Having only seen the Sabres once this season I was curious to see how Olympic hero Miller was playing, since his numbers have been terrible this year. That goal is not one he would have allowed two years ago and is indiciative of his struggles right now.

However, there wasn’t much Miller could do on either of the Devils’ second-period goals. Elias found Sykora in the slot for a pinpoint wrister just 86 seconds into the middle frame, with defenseman Anton Volchenkov also getting an assist on Sykora’s second goal of the game. He had his chances to get the hat trick…as captain Zach Parise remarked after the game, ‘he could have had five’…but couldn’t quite get the third. About four minutes later, the Sabres’ Luke Adam could have cut the lead to 2-1 but the goal was disallowed due to a high stick. Perhaps we caught a break on that one from Toronto (for once), as I didn’t think it was a high stick either in real time or on the one replay they showed on the board.

Instead of the game being 2-1, it would get to 3-0 a minute and a half later when Parise’s beautiful deflection of a Mark Fayne shot gave the captain his team-leading 12th goal. However, an ill-advised boarding penalty by Eric Boulton led to not only four resulting misconduct penalties, but also to a Sabres power play goal when Thomas Vanek scored off a rebound. Despite two more Sabre power plays in that period (including a dubious high-stick call on Sykora), the Devils didn’t let them get any closer in the second. Or the third…putting on an old-time display of how to play with the lead, the Devils only allowed six shots in the final period and play moved fast.

Fortunately, the only two puzzling moments of the game’s final twenty minutes had nothing to do with the outcome. The first one came midway through the third, when Ilya Kovalchuk and Adam Henrique had what should have been a two-on-one chance but for reasons known only to him, Kovy skated towards Henrique instead of away from him, killing off any chance for a pass and opportunity. And somewhat surprisingly, in the final two minutes with the Sabres’ net empty, Sykora was nowhere to be found. Even Parise said he wished Sykora was on the ice at the end. Why Pete DeBoer chose not to do this is unclear…but another unlikely Devil took the opportunity to nearly score a spectacular goal, as Brodeur’s clearance missed the net by a couple of yards. With a two-goal lead, Marty was certainly trying for his third career goal but it wasn’t meant to be.

At least the win, and Sykora’s two goals were plenty of excitement for one night.

Even when I’m not spending my days coughing up a lung as I have been this week, I’ve never been fond of roller coasters. Just don’t have the stomach for them, never have and never will. Even a small, kiddie roller coaster and a big pirate ship rocking back and forth scares me to death. When I see my friends ride the twister at Coney Island and the ridiculous rides at Great Adventure I wonder how the heck they do it.

Perhaps that’s why games like last night drive me up a wall, when the Devils were in complete command after two periods against a struggling Caps team, then melted down in the third…blowing a 3-0 lead before eventually falling back on their one saving grace – the shootout – to finally win a game that should have been a coast job. Before last season’s tale of two halves, most Devil regular seasons over the last fifteen years have been smooth ferry rides to the playoffs with few choppy waters. This year has been a whole new animal though. Not only don’t you know what you’re getting game to game, you don’t know what you’re getting period to period with this team. Which leads to the ultimate emotional roller-coaster.

Of course my present condition isn’t helping my mood much, although I was happy with what I saw the first two periods last night. Unlike most of our recent matchups with them (and goalie Michael Neuvirth, unbeaten in five starts against us before last night), we took it to the Caps early and often. Early on though it did look like Neuvirth was doing his best Henrik Lundqvist impression, stoning us on several terrific chances. It took us until early in the second period to finally break through when an Ilya Kovalchuk slapper cracked the forcefield on the opposition net – on a power play, to boot! Minutes later, Kovy factored into another goal, feeding rookie defenseman Alex Urbom with a sweet pass, and Urbom deked out Neuvirth to double the Devils’ lead.

Things were going so well last night, even Chico Resch was adroitly ad-libbing out of his mistakes. After Urbom’s goal, he said ‘There’s nothing like scoring your first NHL goal….pregnant pause upon realizing or being told that it was actually Urbom’s second….except following that up with a beauty for your second NHL goal!’ When Adam Henrique tipped home a Matt Taormina shot to make it 3-0 midway through the second, I’ll admit it, I thought the game was on ice. I’ve seen enough Devil games this year that I should have known it wasn’t the case but it wasn’t so much that I had confidence in the Devils. Instead, it was seeing the Caps pack in the tents time and again when they get behind big – like Game 7 against the Pens or any number of games against the Rangers the last few years where they went down 5-0, 6-0, 7-0.

Maybe I should have known we were in for it when Deb Placey made a comment during the second intermission about Martin Brodeur working on a shutout. Considering Marty has only had one game where he’s even allowed one goal this year, and our late-game defensive woes, it’s a little premature to start counting down to the shutout. Sure enough, the Caps got the memo about how we wet our pants in the third period of games and started coming. After a narrow miss seconds earlier, the Caps executed a beautiful tic-tac-toe play with Brooks Laich getting open in the crease and slipping one past Brodeur to get the Caps back in the game.

Although the Caps dominated the third, outshooting the Devils 9-4, we still had our chances to put it away. After narrowly escaping serious injury when a shot deflected to his chin earlier in the game, Anton Volchenkov nearly scored his first goal as a Devil (in his second season!) when he ripped one that just clanked off the post. When Jason Chimera – who also beat us with a crucial goal in the teams’ last matchup here – outmuscled Brodeur to stuff in the Caps’ second goal at 12:48, you could just feel the balloon deflating. With time ticking down, the Caps executed a blind backdoor play, and it was Chimera – again (when the hell did this guy become a Devil killer?!) – that tied the game with just 1:42 left. I was so disgusted I was half hoping they’d lose in regulation at that point. The last time that happened though, it took the team a while to recover from a 3-0 meltdown in Florida.

It was all the Devils could do to hang on for the seemingly inevitable shootout. If we’ve been consistent in one thing this year (besides our inconsistency), it’s been the skills competition. And again, they came through with Kovalchuk and Patrik Elias getting the goals, while Brodeur made a highlight-reel stop on Alexander Ovechkin to thwart the Caps. While you can look at the Devils’ record of 19-14-1 and say good job, the fact is they’re 8-1 in the shootout, which means only eleven non-shootout wins (ten in regulation). What you hope for if you’re a Devils fan is that these shootout wins are giving them a stay of execution until the defense gets healthy, then hopefully team straightens out its play late in games.

For now I guess I’ll just be thankful it’s not a disaster on par of last year, though I’m not kidding myself thinking things are all hunky-dory right now.

Hello everyone, I’m back…finally with my computer up and running. Still sick, to be sure but after sweating off a fever I’m at least up to writing now. Even if I’ll be a scratch for the game tomorrow (planned to go see the boys play against the Caps but sold my tickets when I got sick, so I’ll be watching the broadcast). Over the last couple of weeks there’s been plenty good and bad to write about. Derek took the bad – though not from his perspective – the other night so I’ll start with the good and look back on Nieds night.

Regrettably I wasn’t able to be around to write on this one at the time but I did attend the game of course…and had a bird’s eye view of them raising Scott Niedermayer‘s jersey up from 120 since they did it behind the net. Admittedly when it was first announced, I was a little lukewarm about it and thought they should have waited a while since a lot of the fanbase is still (unreasonably) bitter about him leaving, but you can’t really deny he deserves the honor on merit. His winning has been chronicled a hundred different ways, including emcee Doc Emrick using props to do so, bringing out the record books for all the different levels of hockey Nieds has played on.

Certainly you have to look at Nieds’ level of play and say it was no accident he won so much on all levels. If you were only allowed to give the Conn Smythe to a player on a winning team in a Stanley Cup final, you could have made a compelling argument for Nieds winning it in 2003 when he led the Devils in points during the playoffs and was a force defensively. Derided for much of his career for inconsistency – including by myself – I felt Nieds turned it up another level in 2003 and 2004 under the late Pat Burns. He had become the dominant player his talent had always predicted, starting with his end-to-end goal in Game 2 of the 1995 Stanley Cup finals. Even with a bit of a mercurial early part of his career, Nieds was always a very good player, and a difference-maker (as the Devils’ mediocre record in the first twenty games of 2001 attested to when both he and Cup hero Jason Arnott were holdouts).

After winning the Norris trophy in 2004 and being named captain once Scott Stevens was forced to retire, it appeared as if he’d cement his legacy as an all-time Devil that much more…but it turned out Nieds had a higher calling. In a rarity of modern professional sports, he left the highest offer on the table (ours) to go to Anaheim and be closer to home, including having his brother on the same team. At the time I felt that playing with his brother was the only reason he left, that he wasn’t looking to actually win since the Ducks weren’t particularly a great team at the time and he’d already accomplished everything championship-wise here. However, in his first year the Ducks got to the Conference Finals and after GM Brian Burke added Chris Pronger in the offseason, Anaheim went all the way the next year with Nieds getting his Conn Smythe, and Rob finally getting to hold the Cup with his brother.

Even with Nieds’ Disney-like finish to his career, his number still had to be retired by the Devils. Even if the immortal Mike Mottau wore it for us after Nieds left (but while he was still playing in the league), and Nieds never actually wore a Devils uniform on the Prudential Center ice until last Friday. All three retired numbers the Devils have raised to the rafters have been of defensemen that played on each of the Devils’ three Cup-winning teams. The only other players to have that distinction are Martin Brodeur, who’ll surely join them in the rafters someday soon, and utility forward Sergei Brylin – still playing in the KHL and thus unable to attend the ceremony.

Perhaps the most uplifting thing about the night was the return of Doc himself, kept secret until just a couple of days before the ceremony. Really, it would have been a shame if anyone else had done it since Doc called practically every one of Nieds’ games as a Devil before he started branching off to VERSUS and NBC post-lockout. It had been kind of puzzling that Doc hadn’t done one of our VERSUS telecasts yet but apparently he was scheduled to do the game in Buffalo a few weeks ago except that he had a hernia situation that needed to be taken care of. He will do one of the Devils-Boston games in January apparently, according to one of the Devils fans who heard him speak at the fan club meeting.

In his return to the Prudential Center ice, Doc played to the crowd, reminding people that one of his favorite Nieds moments was a rare fight against a certain Ranger (I think Valeri Kamensky) where the Ranger jersey came off and Nieds threw it into the crowd. Funny I seem to have forgotten about it, for all I know it could have been a preseason game but Doc sure knows his audience! Nieds was his usual understated self, thanking everyone who he needed to thank and keeping his poise throughout, before he and his family went to the net right in front of me and started raising the banner. I got at least one or two good pictures of it on my phone, after it had been raised since the lighting was too dim throughout most of the ceremony to get a decent picture otherwise.

Keeping up their perfect record on retirement ceremony nights, the Devils whipped the Stars 6-3 in an uplifting performance for several reasons. First, the fact that it was Travis Zajac‘s first game back after his offseason achilles injury that ended the Devils’ all-time iron-man streak. Then there’s current captain Zach Parise‘s recent resurgence…which crested last Friday with a goal and three assists, a performance and effort that screamed ‘ZACH’S BACK!’. His signature play from that game was when he terrorized the Dallas defenders shorthanded for about thirty seconds, before stripping the puck from Stephan Robidas and laying up a perfect pass to Adam Henrique for the game-tying goal in the second period.

That shorthanded goal turned the game around, as the Devils turned a 2-1 deficit into a 6-3 win with six different goalscorers lighting the lamp. Yet, despite the six goals one of the three stars of the game turned out to be Bryce Salvador, who didn’t register a single point…but what he did do was put up a +4, play a team-leading 26:20 with defensemen Henrik Tallinder and Andy Greene on the shelf, and save an automatic goal with a brilliant sweep of the puck from the crease early in the second period. I was really wondering about how getting rid of Colin White to make room for Salvador (coming off a year on the shelf, thanks to a concussion caused by inner-ear symptoms) was going to work, but after a slow start Sal’s turned back the clock and looked like the defenseman he was when he first got here.

Finally, it felt like beating Dallas at home buried one of our recent ghosts, for it was against the Stars last year on Opening Night where the John MacLean era got off to a flying start – for the first ten minutes – before the Devils melted down for a devastating defeat. Speaking of MacLean, I was kind of relieved he wasn’t booed when he appeared on the jumbotron to make comments about his former teammate Nieds. Even Bobby Holik didn’t get booed though I didn’t hear a lot of cheering either…but Scott Gomez got booed so loudly I bet he heard it in Montreal. The team’s really gotta stop putting him on the board until he retires at least.

Winning on Nieds night was the Devils’ third straight win, in a streak that would go to four in a row the next day after Patrik Elias broke MacLean’s team record for goals by scoring two against the Habs in a come-from-behind win at Montreal. To start the streak, the Devils swept the Florida road trip, beating Tampa in a 5-4 game that wasn’t as close as the score indicated, and then getting revenge on the Panthers for a horrendous meltdown earlier in the season in Florida by turning the tables and rallying form a multi-goal deficit in Sunrise to win in – guess what? – a shootout.

After scoring eleven goals in two games, of course Henrik Lundqvist only allowed the Devils one first-period tally – Zajac’s first since March of last season – and as usual since the lockout won in his home away from home, after Brodeur again allowed a back-breaking soft second goal and couldn’t rise to the challenge against his biggest tri-state rival. Even with that defeat, the Devils still have a respectable 18-14-1 record and currently are holding a playoff spot. Even if almost half of those wins have come via the shootout…as the Flyers proved a couple of years ago, all you have to do is get in the playoffs and you can do something in them.

Our last game before the holiday is tomorrow night against a Caps team that is surprisingly still sitting outside a playoff spot. Even after firing last year’s 24/7 celebrity Bruce Boudreau, it doesn’t seem like it’s done much to pick up the team’s play or revive Alexander Ovechkin‘s career. It’s amazing that the NHL built most of its marketing around Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin not that long ago, and now one’s on the shelf yet again with a concussion and the other’s turned into a rather ordinary (and moody) player overnight. I won’t be in attendance because of a virus, but perhaps that’s a good thing since the Devils are 3-0 at home when I’m not in the stands and 4-6-1 when I am, with my only home win since early November coming on Nieds night.

Hopefully they keep that split going for one more game tomorrow, then keep winning when I do plan on going to both home games the next week 😛