The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Martin Brodeur, like the team with which he has spent every single game of his career, has his critics.

They say the Devils, thanks to their mastery of defensive hockey, are boring. They say their approach robs the game of its fast-moving, free-flowing charm. They say that along with stifling their opponents’ offensive chances, they also strangle out any enjoyment to be derived from the sport. They say they’re responsible for the decline in the sport’s popularity and therefore the 2004-05 lockout.

He did it all behind a dull team, so it somehow only kind of counts. Makes perfect sense.

Tonight, like so many other nights since the Devils started winning retarded amounts of hockey games in 1993 or so, wasn’t them squeaking by 1-0 or 2-0 with an empty-net goal. They turned in the kind of consummate road game that we’ve seen for almost the entirety of the last two decades and beat the defending Stanley Cup Champions by four, and shut them out in their own building, in what was a matchup between the two best teams in hockey.

Winning 4-0 is a lot of things. Convincing, for one. Teams don’t just happen to win by four and keep a shutout. That’s attention to detail. That’s wide-ranging attack. That’s down to goaltending. Especially because, like I said, Brodeur made THIRTY-FIVE SAVES. A team so allegedly focused on defense and clutching and grabbing and parking five guys in the neutral zone doesn’t give up 35 shots. It can’t. So maybe, just maybe, Brodeur earned it. He only stopped Geno Malkin and Sid Crosby point-blank three times tonight. You don’t luck into it.

But the Devils are boring, right? Okay, sure. Let’s go with that.

The Devils “trapped” their way to three pre-Lockout Stanley Cups in nine seasons, and it was all because of the system. You can begin to make that argument, I guess. Except they did so with FOUR different coaches (Jacques Lemaire, Robbie Ftorek/Larry Robinson and Pat Burns). And really only a small handful of carryover players between each team. But okay, if you wanna blame those three teams and their long, terrible reach of hockey’s landscape that was not unlike the black hand of Sauron over Middle-Earth for the death of hockey, then go crazy, buddy.

Personally I love defensive hockey and I don’t find the trap boring, AND I wish it would make a comeback.

People thought the lockout would kill the Devils. Especially because the NHL invented rules that SPECIFICALLY targeted both the Devils as a team and Brodeur as a player, and they’ve had exactly one season under 100 points (they had a measly 99 in 2007-08 and only won 46 games like a bunch of bums). So how are you going to call any of the post-lockout Devils teams boring? For real.

They’re not a defensive team, but they are defensively-responsible, and there’s a huge difference. Players that lead defensive teams in scoring rack up like 65 points and call it a season. Hell, Patrik Elias led the Devs in points in each of the five seasons prior to the lockout, averaging 73.4 per season, so if you want to argue that’s defensive hockey, then that’s almost fair. But Zach Parise is probably going to lead the team in scoring for the third straight year, and he’s knocked down about a point a game over the course of those seasons with very little in the way of what you’d call a supporting cast around him apart from Elias and Travis Zajac. But when you’ve got to include Zajac, whose career high is 62 points, as “supporting cast” then that shadow’s got an awful long reach.

Let’s be honest. This is a team that, regardless of circumstance or opponent or era or league-wide rules, has done nothing but savage their opponents for 16 straight seasons.

They’re not boring, they’re amazing.

(Oh and I guess Brodeur, who got his 104th career shutout tonight, is pretty good too.)

Elsewhere…

Buffalo 3, Toronto 2 (OT)

Oh yes this was a great game for Versus to show tonight. Much better than that game between the two best teams in the league that featured two of the top three players in the league and the best goalie ever going for the all-time shutout record. Much, much better than that. Heck, Ian White scored a goal. What more could you want?

Tampa Bay 4, New York Islanders 2

Former River Hawk Dwayne Roloson proves once again that UMass Lowell graduates like him and me are the coolest dudes.

Florida 4, Philadelphia 1

I think that’s like 13 losses in Philly’s last 15 games. Something nuts like that. A talented but fundamentally broken team, you must agree. Anaheim’s gotta love that those first-round picks are comin’ their way.

New York Rangers 3, Carolina 1

Technically it was Rangers 3, Hurricanes 1. To be more exact though, it was Marian Gaborik + Empty Net 3, Hurricanes 1. And it’s been that way all goddamn season.

Montreal 4, Atlanta 3

Marc-Andre Bergeron had two goals. I had to read that about four times to make sure it was right. But it is. Marc-Andre Bergeron. Wow.

Boston 2, Ottawa 0

The next time the Sens plays the Bruins and Tim Thomas gets the go, they should just forfeit and go home. They haven’t beaten Thomas in 10 straight tries.

Colorado 4, Minnesota 3

Maybe the Wild should start setting some of their players on fire. See if that motivates anyone to not play like garbage.

San Jose 4, Dallas 3

Congratulations to Marty Turco, who set his own personal record tonight. It was his first game ever with a save percentage above .900. Yaaaaaay.

St. Louis 7, Edmonton 2

The Oilers might be the worst organization in hockey. They signed Nikolai Khabibulin to a loooooong-term, big-money deal then found out his spinal column is held together with Scotch Tape and a thing of Silly Putty with half an old Marmaduke cartoon pressed into it. So now they’re stuck with Jeff Drouin-Deslauriers for the next 14 seasons or something and ol’ J-Double-D has as much business goaltending in an NHL game as you do.

Phoenix 5, Columbus 2

Mathieu Garon had a perfectly Garon-y night. A big 18 saves on 23 shots. Good job pal!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 3:11 am and is filed under Good night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.