INSIDE HOCKEY

It was a bad week for the Devils. Starting off with a loss in Boston, followed by additional losses in Philadelphia and Chicago, the Devils ended the week with their first loss at home since Martin Brodeur returned. Even though the Devils have clinched a playoff spot, they are still at risk of losing their top three berth.

With 14 possible points left in the season for the Devils, continuing on a losing streak is not ideal for them. It’s better to walk into the playoffs on a happy note, rather then a somber note.

“Last season we didn’t play well at all,” Martin Brodeur said after the game. “I don’t think we’re playing really bad [now]. I think we’re just making mistakes. We’re playing teams that are hungry to win games. We’ve been paying the price on everything.”

The Devils will play their division rivals, the New York Rangers, on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. This is a very important game for both teams. The Rangers and the Devils have both been struggling against teams at the bottom of the conference that don’t even have a chance of making it into the playoffs (even if those teams started an end of the season win streak).

This isn’t a matter of the top teams thinking, ‘this is an easy win.’ This is a matter of those bottom seeded teams giving the top teams a run for their money.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of playing bad,” Brodeur said. “When we make mistakes that late in the season, teams will be there to capitalize on them. Right now, everything we seem to do just went the other way.”

In Saturday night’s loss, the Hurricanes came alive in the final period. Whether they had been sleeping during the first forty minutes or felt like they needed to step up their game in the final twenty minutes, Carolina really delivered a harsh blow that made them look like the scariest team I have seen all season long.

The team that showed up in the final twenty minutes is the kind of team that could easily pound the rest of the playoff contenders into the ice and take the Stanley Cup like gladiators in an arena filled with hungry lions.

New Jersey Devils vs. Carolina Hurricanes, 1-2

The Carolina Hurricanes have dominated the series against the New Jersey Devils. After Saturday’s contest, the Canes have gone 3-0-0 against the Devils. The Devils have one game left in the regular season against Carolina, which will fall on April 11th, the final game of the season for the Devils.

“They play aggressively,” Patrik Elias said of the Hurricanes. “They have good balance to the team. Tonight was a close game. We tried to protect the game, tried to protect the lead in the third, and then made a couple of mistakes in the third.”

In the first period, both teams went even strength against each other, up until a lucky break happened in the final minutes of the period. Brian Gionta collected the puck in the Devils zone and carried it out and into the Canes zone. With a quick pass to Patrik Elias, Elias delivered at 18:09.

With a quiet second period, the Canes came back in the third with a vengeance with only seven minutes to spare. Sergei Samsonov gave that hopeful Brodeur shutout a death sentence when he tied up the game at 13:05 off of a bad pass by David Clarkson.

A bad hooking penalty by Paul Martin awarded the Canes their fourth power play of the night. Twenty-one seconds in, Tuomo Ruutu caught a rebound in front of Brodeur and slammed it on through for the gamewinner at 16:26.

The Devils had hoped they could tie up the game in the final thirty seconds by pulling Brodeur and putting the best power forwards on the ice. The Canes were able to send the final blow across the ice as the buzzer sounded and the puck landed in the empty net.

“It is what it is,” coach Sutter said after the game. “A tight game like that – 1-0 hockey game, you make that mistake in your own zone, we hadn’t done that all night. You do it in a 1-0 game…it’s got to be a learning experience for those guys. I hope they learn from it. You’re going to get into these one-goal games. You have to do the details, the little things well. You look at last night’s game (at Chicago) and tonight – two mistakes cost us goals.

"When you don’t do things right with the puck, [like] tonight, [it was the] same thing at 1-0. Then you take a penalty and get a power play scored against you, 2-1. I’m not blaming them but they have to learn from it.”

“We have to snap out of it,” Zach Parise said of the losses. “We gotta get back to playing the way we’re used to playing when we were burying teams. It doesn’t seem like we’re doing that right now.”

Marty Brodeur Night Set

The Devils will host a special night for Martin Brodeur’s 552nd win on April 3rd against the Tampa Bay Lightning. This will be a very special night for all. Make sure to purchase your tickets for the evening. [Click on the link on this page to purchase tickets for the night that will help benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.]

Simply The Best

After the lockout, Patrik Elias suffered a lot upon his return to the NHL. After contracting Hepatitis A while he was in Russia, he was criticized season after season of not being able to produce the way that he had before the lockout. But this season, Elias has started to come back and perform the way that he has been expected to perform. After tallying his 31st goal of the season, he solidified what it really means to be a New Jersey Devil this season…it’s about winning.

Winning also means obtaining your own personal goals as an individual player. This is the first time since the 2004-05 lockout that Elias has been able to have a 30+ goal season.

But he’s not the only one defying their own records. This season, Jamie Langenbrunner has had a career high of 25 goals and counting. The most goals he has ever had in his entire career was 23 goals. This season also marked a career high in points for him.

Zach Parise has also surpassed his career record. With 42 goals in his pocket, 89 points, becoming the second top-goalscorer in the league, and holding on to fourth place in the league’s individual scoring, Parise has become the most underrated player in the entire league.

The top players holding on to the top positions for the Art Ross Trophy is Evgeni Malkin, Alexander Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby followed by Zach Parise. For Parise, he’s sitting nicely at the top with three of the top names in the league. Perhaps it’s time for the NHL to start pushing Parise’s name as a marketing tool.

Perhaps the logic in what has happened within the team outperforming themselves individually (and for many of the players, making this the best season they have ever had), could be due to one simple thing. John Madden spoke about it earlier on in the season. He even repeated it again just a few weeks ago. When Marty went out around the same time as many other players who became injury plagued at the beginning of the season, the team challenged itself to step up their game.

This was a time when each individual player (especially those that were called up from the Lowell Devils) could prove themselves and be better players. That mantra rang through at the beginning of the season and continued through to the end of the season (and will continue beyond).

They weren’t thinking about breaking records. If it happened, it happened. They were only thinking about being winners, more-so as a team rather then just as an individual. The way things worked out this season was that they ended up being winners as a team, and a little bit of that gold dust trickled on down to the players who really stepped up their games to ensure their team became a winning team.