INSIDE HOCKEY

Getting twenty minutes of Zach Parise's time to talk about whatever floats our boat is a hard thing to come by during the regular season. But with very few people seeking him out to interview him at the NHL Awards, I had the opportunity to pull Zach to the side to talk about everything that's happened since the end of the season to get a better look at how things went down. A lot of times it takes stepping away from the game for a little while to really assess what happened.

The last time I saw Zach Parise was after Game Seven of the First Round of the Playoffs…right after the Devils humiliating defeat in the last 80 seconds of the game by the Carolina Hurricanes. He was sitting in his locker completely stunned. The look of a man defeated down to the very last cell in his body gave a lot of us nightmares for weeks.

“I’ve been great,” Parise said about how he’s been doing since that conclusion to Game Seven. “I forgot about it. It‘s something I never want to go through again.

“I’ve been in Minnesota, just hanging out there,” he said of how he‘s been spending his off-season so far. “I came out here [to Las Vegas] on Monday. I’ve been hanging out. I’ve got a lot of friends down here that came out with me.

“I won a couple of bucks,” he said of his earnings.

His game of choice, of course, is blackjack.

Parise had no intentions of sticking around in Vegas for the NHLPA meetings taking place after the NHL Awards. That decision had more to do with previous plans and his upcoming trip to Mexico.

Believe it or not, even though it’s been a month and a half since the Devils fell out of the Stanley Cup race, Parise has already started preparing for next season.

“I already started [preparing],” he said. “I started three weeks ago already. It’s the same as always…working out, shooting a lot of pucks, waiting to see who our coach is going to be. I guess that’s the question that’s on everyone’s minds.”

“Do you think John Madden’s going to be back?” I asked him.

“I don’t know.,” he replied. “It’s so hard to predict. The only thing I know is that I read in the paper that he hadn’t talked to Lou or anything yet.”

As we compared notes on what we had read in the papers, I relayed onto him that Rich Chere of the Star-Ledger had said that Lou had made no decision yet on either Madden or Brendan Shanahan. He then brought up Brian Gionta.

In my honest opinion, I really believe that Gio will end up looking for some other territory. That’s just the feeling I got at the end of the season. It was that same feeling I got during the last half of the season that Brent Sutter would end up leaving as head coach and return home.

“There are certain guys from a player’s perspective that really give the team an image,” he said of Gionta. “Personality…like Mike Rupp and Kevin Weekes. Those are the guys that have been really important. Those are the guys that you hope stick around.”

Which led us to Scott Clemmensen and his upcoming venture into free agency. “Scott, as far as I’m concerned, he got us to where we were and where we ended up. It will be interesting to see what happens with him.

“That’s the unfortunate part of the game. You never know when one of your best friends could end up going somewhere else to another team.”

As far as what the team needs to build on in the future he said, “I think there’s definitely room for another defenseman [after losing Niclas Havelid].

“I think we’ve got great forwards. I don’t think that’s an issue. We’ve got scoring…I think we will get, hopefully, a coach. I think our strength that we ended up getting away from at the end of last season…our strength is puck possession, being an offensive team. I think we were playing our best hockey when we were an offensive team.”

So then what happened? How did they get away from that?

“I don’t know,” he replied. “It’s what happened when we were trying to win games 2-1 and 1-0.”

This brought up an analysis that many of us believed was happening on the ice…that the team was falling into old habits when Martin Brodeur returned to the ice. When Marty was away, they did their best to keep the puck out of their own zone…puck possession.

When Marty returned, they continued to lose that advantage with the puck which made Marty work harder on the ice. This, of course, all happened after the 552nd win and when Patrik Elias’ reached his milestone in his career as a New Jersey Devil.

“I don’t think anyone sits there and relies too much on him,” he responded. “I’ll say from my perspective and from our team‘s that we don’t think that way at all. We don’t think, ‘oh, Marty’s in.’ We‘ve got a good team.

“Look at Detroit. They are one of the best defensive teams, but they’ve got the puck on you. That’s their defense. I think that’s how we were playing defense. That was when Marty wasn’t there. We were forechecking. We were puck control. Then when he came back towards the end of the season, it seemed like we went back to being a defensive team, where we were in our zone a lot.

"We were still playing well in our own zone, but we weren’t attacking like we should. I just don’t think that works. It’s tough to explain, but we kind of changed our ways towards the end.”

When asked about the rumors that Coach Jacques Lemaire may be the next head coach for the Devils he responded, “I’ve heard [Brian] Rolston talk about him. He said that he’s the best coach he’s ever had. I don’t know anything about him. He knows what he’s doing. We’ll see. Like I said, I just hope whoever is going to be there wants to play puck-possession, up-tempo style hockey like the type of season we had.”

“I wasn’t too surprised,” he said of Sutter leaving. “But at the same time you’re kind of shocked that it actually happened, like, ‘oh, wow!’

“I think we’ve underachieved two years in a row. We had a great regular season, but no one cares about a great regular season, though. It’s playoffs.”

So just when was it that everything changed for the Devils that all of a sudden sent the Devils into a fight for their position in the final weeks? To me, I could pinpoint the exact moment. It was when a question was posed to Patrik Elias on how the Devils did not have any kind of need to do anything else now that everything that was going to happen that season had already happened both for himself and Brodeur.

They were basically D-O-N-E accomplishing everything.

“I think that’s true,” he said. “It was a big let-down after his record was set. Ever since then, [it took a nose dive]. There was so much build-up to that and after it happened, it was like, ‘alright, let’s just get to the playoffs.’ Well, you can’t do that.

“We’re in the playoffs. We’re playing not to lose. We were playing, ‘well, hopefully we won’t lose the game,’ when earlier we were playing and we’d score six goals. If we win 6-5, that’s great.

“At the end of the day, you have to score goals. That’s how I view the game.”

Parise did not win the Lady Byng on Thursday night. That honor went to Pavel Datsyuk of the Detroit Red Wings.