INSIDE HOCKEY

In Game 3, expect the Devils to come back with a little bit more power both defensively and offensively. With or without their Captain Jamie Langenbrunner, the Devils have always had the ability to take an injured player out and place another player into that role and adapt to the role as if the missing component was no longer an issue.

We’ve seen it with their goaltending where Scott Clemmensen stood in front of the net and helped the Devils land first place in the Atlantic Division after Martin Brodeur went out earlier in the season with a torn biceps muscle. We saw it early in the season when one player after another went out injured. We’ll see it again every time a soldier goes down in the playoffs. The Devils always have someone in their arsenal to put in that can perform the exact same role in the same way and still be able to produce.

You can’t defeat the Devils so easily by taking out their star players. They always have another Devil to put in his place.

Langenbrunner suffered from a lower body injury in the second period of Game 2. He is slated to miss the next two games.

With the Devils ability to adapt to changes quickly, with Langenbrunner sitting out, finding another player to fit into his role will be simple. Travis Zajac and Zach Parise have the ability to work with just about any line and still produce. Actually, just put Parise anywhere and he can still produce. Try to knock him down, injure him, or take him out and he’ll still bounce back.

In Game 3, the Hurricanes realize that the game will get a little tougher because the Devils are going to come back with a lot more fierceness like a swarm of demons that just stepped out of hell. After all, they are the Devils. Demons can weather storms, if not control them to their own advantage.

The mentality of the Devils throughout the season has been to let one loss be just one loss. They move on with a bit of ‘amnesia’ (as John Madden calls it) and pretend like that last loss never even happened. That way they can remain focused on the task at hand.

“Ideally, you want to go down there two-nothing,” Parise said. “I don’t think anyone has ever gone 16-0 and won the Cup. We’ll start over again.”

The Hurricanes spent most of game 2 playing a bit of goon hockey in the first couple of periods. At one point, Langenbrunner found himself being turned over like an egg in a frying pan. There were a lot of things happening out on the ice that even these eyes couldn’t believe was happening.

But that goon hockey was what it took to get the storm started for the Hurricanes as they took the game in overtime.

“I think they played a better game,” Parise said after game 2. “I think they had a little bit more energy to play, a little more intensity. I think that was it. They played better. I think we played well. We did a lot of good things. We’ll get our shot here in the next game.”

Prediction

If it wasn’t for one of the radio guys noting after game 2 that I seem to have a knack for picking who is going to score the next goal just by mentioning their name (or when I say I love a certain player as one of my favorites), then I never would have noticed that as far as opposites go for me this post-season, I am actually picking the winners (unlike in previous years where I would mention a name or a team and something bad would happen to them).

So this is where I predict that the Devils will take the next two games with a goal from Parise in each contest. The series will go to Game 7. But I’ll wait to tell you who will take Game 7 later.

I have been secretly wishing that John Madden will score a goal in the first round. I just have this feeling that if he scores a goal in the first round, this run for the Cup will be just as magical as we thought it would be when I interviewed him for his exclusive a little over a month ago.

That goal from Madden will solidify who I believe is winning the Cup this year.