For the first time all season, he New Jersey Devils showed some sustained life. Six wins in their last eight games, four of which coming in a row, pulled the Devils to within two points of climbing out of the cellar of the NHL standings.
On Wednesday, the Devils traveled to Detroit to try and extend both their winning streak to five, and heir points streak to eight.
They failed, however, to do either. In a very disorganized effort, the Devils fell behind early, but quickly responded with an equalizer. Plagued by a handful of bad calls, including an obscenely late high sticking penalty on Brian Rolston which was called well after the Devils not only carried the puck out of their own end, but nearly notched a goal on the scoring attempt. They also had another equalizer called back due to what the referees had deemed as Ilya Kovalchuk pushing Jimmy Howard's pad into he net and the puck as well. Yet, if the puck was covered, why had there not been a whistle to signify a frozen puck?
Officiating inconsistency killed a lot of the Devils' hope on Wednesday, but their young players made their fair share of costly poor plays. Mark Fraser, for example, tried to play a loose puck across the rink at center ice rather than looping back toward the boards and dumping the puck back into the offensive zone. The play resulted in Daryon Helm stealing the horrendously slow pass from Fraser, breaking in on Martin Brodeur uncontested and beating him high glove side for the firs goal of the night.
The question now has become will the Devils be able to pick up their winning ways from before the Detroit game, or will they come out of the All Star Break just as flat, disorganized and unmotivated as they have been for nearly the entire season.
With just over 30 games to play in the regular season, the Devils have a steep uphill climb ahead of them to not only try and make the playoffs, but simply break even on the year. With a record of 16-30-3, the Devils need to go 23-9-1 just to avoid a losing record for the first time in nearly 20 years. They sit 11 wins away from a playoff berth (22 points) with no games in hand on current eight seeded Atlanta.
If they pick up from where they left off, even counting the Detroit game, they would finish 25-4-4. That record would give the 54 points for a total of 89 on the year.
What will they do, how will they come out of the nearly week long hiatus, and where will they finish? Only time will tell, but this particular fan thinks they will find their way into the post season party...
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