Role players help Devils maintain spotless road record

October 29, 2009   ·   Hasan   ·   Jump to comments

With the Devils already missing Patrik Elias, Paul Martin and Jay Pandolfo due to injury the carnage continued to pile in Boston tonight when Johnny Oduya left in the second period due to that dreaded ‘lower-body soreness’ and would not return.  And for the first time all season, Martin Brodeur was given the night off in favor of backup Yann Danis.  Given all that it would have been hard to predict a Devils win in Boston, even with the Bruins’ own injury issues.

However as the saying goes, that’s why they play the games.  Danis responded to his first start as a Devil even better than could have been expected, making 31 saves and backstopping the Devils to a 2-1 win in Boston, upping their record to 7-4 with a perfect six wins in six games on the road. 

Early in the game it seemed as if both teams played loosey-goosey with players in each lineup looking to make an impression.  I’m not sure either coach was really happy with their defense in the opening twenty minutes, but it was the Devils who opened the scoring (twice) – first when Jamie Langenbrunner should have scored but the official lost sight of a puck that bounced high in the air after a Tim Thomas save and the whistle was blown just before Langenbrunner corralled the puck and put it past Thomas.  Minutes later, David Clarkson scored a goal the refs couldn’t wave off when he and Nicklas Bergfors created a two-on-one, with a Bergfors shot tricking through Thomas and Clarkson reaching back one-handed to put the puck home at 13:25.  Bryce Salvador also got an assist on Clarkson’s goal, his third of the year.

An early power play in the second period was the impetus for Boston to even the score.  Though their goal didn’t actually come on the man advantage, as happens sometimes the sustained pressure carried over into the first few seconds of even-strength, and some bad luck played into it too.  Oduya’s bad night began when a Zdeno Chara shot broke his stick just before a Marco Sturm pass went through the crease and bounced off of a body before finding Patrice Bergeron on the doorstep for an easy goal that Danis could do nothing about 2:35 into the middle frame.  Things went from bad to worse for Oduya (already a -6 with 16 PIM’s and no points this season) when he left due to injury in the second period.  Apparently the injury actually occurred late in the first period after a hit by Byron Bitz.

Now with the game tied, things settled down on both sides for the remainder of the second and most of the third.  Just when it looked like both teams would be happy with a point and overtime though, things started to heat up when Thomas and Clarkson went at it after the reigning Vezina winner made a save off the Devils winger with about three minutes to go.  I didn’t see what happened next as I was flipping back and forth between the World Series and that, but I gather Thomas either taunted him or faked like he was going to shoot the puck at the pesky Clarkson who was visibly angry with the Bruin netminder after whatever transpired.

It would be the Devils who got the last laugh on Thomas tonight, as he let another puck squirt through him from a Zach Parise shot that Danius Zubrus would put home with just 86 seconds remaining, giving New Jersey a 2-1 lead, with Langenbrunner also getting an assist on Zubrus’s second of the year.  Danis survived a harrowing moment with about 40 seconds left when a Dennis Wideman shot bounced off something in front and glanced off the crossbar, and also got help when an erroneous icing call on the Bruins led to a late faceoff at center ice. 

Still, the Devils’ backup earned the two points on this night with a high-quality performance that may have also won him some trust from the coaching staff as the team goes into a severe schedule crunch.  From now until late December, there are no fewer than eight sets of three games in four nights, this week being the first of those stretches.  While it’s probably unrealistic to expect Danis to play once in all of them, at least in an Olympic year it provides Jacques Lemaire with more than enough reason to play Marty fewer than 75 games.

On Halloween, the Devils will attempt to finish off a perfect month on the road with a 3 PM start in Tampa Bay.  And only James Dolan knows where that game will be on TV, since apparently the Devils are going to appear once on every Cablevision station – from MSG to VERSUS to MSG+ to the MSG overflow channel to C-SPAN the other night (technically I think that served as MSG+2), since the Islander-Ranger game had to be carried on every other MSG station known to man.  Hopefully I’ll have enough time before going to a Halloween party to provide a recap, or maybe I’ll just do a livecap that afternoon if I’m around and anticipate no technical difficulties.