Hell Has Frozen over: Hedberg Is more Valuable to the Devils than Brodeur

I don’t know what’s sadder in New Jersey, that perennial Vezina Trophy-contender Martin Brodeur currently has a save percentage barely over .900, or that his back-up Johan Hedberg needed a shutout streak of over 100 minutes to raise his to .896.

"Usurped by a guy nicknameed 'Moose'? Don't make me laugh!"

Truth be told, it’s probably the latter, but what’s perhaps saddest concerning the Devils’ goaltending situation is that Hedberg is now over .500 with a 3-2-1 record, while Brodeur is 4-10-1. Everyone knew the Devils signing Hedberg to a two-year deal this off-season was a sign of the times (i.e. Brodeur not being able to carry as much of the load as he used to), but this is getting ridiculous. With Brodeur out with a sore elbow for a few more days, Hedberg has actually been a rock in nets and has helped to solidify the team’s shaky defensive situation by posting a shutout against the Washington Capitals and then helping his team to beat the Calgary Flames 2-1 on Wednesday

All of a sudden the Devils are playing decently and can proudly lay claim to their first winning streak of the season, albeit one of a modest two games. Okay, maybe not-so proudly lay claim to, but the point is if ever there was a sign that things were turning around for the 7-13-2 Devils, this is it.

Things had gotten so bad that when Ilya Kovalchuk scored a game-winning goal a few weeks ago, analysts were saying how impressive a victory it was for the Devils and how important a goal it was for Kovy. People conveniently turned a blind eye to the fact that the Devils were playing the Edmonton Oilers at the time, one of only two teams currently with a worse record than them, and that the goal came on a power play in overtime no less. Not scoring and winning the game under that set of circumstances would have been akin to a jonesing drug addict not getting his fix despite having his dealer on speed dial and a huge wad of cash in his pocket after ripping off the convenience store down the street. Add in the fact that back-up Devan Dubnyk was in nets for the Oil (Brodeur was for the Devils) and a victory like that should not only be marginalized, it should be stricken from the records out of sheer principle.

So, no, that win wasn’t the turning point for which Devils fans were looking, especially since the team went on to lose three straight after that. This current winning binge has shown far greater signs of life in the team than Kovalchuk did after that goal was scored, which was perhaps an even greater sign of how far the team’s fallen from grace, because in essence it was like talking smack to a baby after stealing the lollipop from straight out of his mouth. But when things are bad I suppose you overemphasize the good and look for the silver lining in the raincloud even if you’re stuck under your leaking roof during a storm and can’t see past the raindrops drowning both the outside and inside of your window.

At this point, it’s clear hell has frozen over with Hedberg making a case to be the go-to guy from here on out. I’m not saying it should happen or that it’s going to, only that there’s a case to be made much to that effect. The Devils are seven points out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern conference and seeing as the Montreal Canadiens earned the eighth seed last year with 88 points, the Devils would hypothetically need 72 points in the remaining 60 games. It’s not impossible, but is surely improbable for a team that has scored less than two goals per game so far.

Brodeur’s career has been circling the drain for some time, with his seemingly being unable to put together one of his signature playoff runs in recent years. It used to be that he would fade in the stretch run, everyone would count him out, then he would go on a tear to start the following season, everyone would think he was back, and then the cycle would repeat. Now he hasn’t even been able to start off half-decently. Granted an inexperienced defensive corps has something to do with that, but so does the undeniable fact that he’s 38.

"This cannot possibly end well."

Meanwhile, Hedberg is your prototypical late-bloomer. He really only got his start in the NHL at 28 and he’s always been an afterthought on whatever team for which he’s played only to eventually make a run, however feeble and ultimately unsuccessful an attempt, at the starting job. Last year, when he was 36, he posted his best season ever, going 21-16-6 with a 2.62 goals-against average and .915 save percentage. However, now he’s 37, and even if he is by some miracle able to convince head coach John MacLean that he’s the better choice for the team right now, he’s still in the twilight of his career no matter how you look at it.

As such, it’s good to look at what’s in the team’s pipeline right now from a goaltending perspective, which amounts to one prospect, singular, in Jeff Frazee, who’s only mustered a .895 save percentage and .500 record playing for the Albany Devils in the AHL this season. The bad news is obvious. The good news is he should fit right in with Hedberg and Brodeur should the need ever arise to promote him.

Maybe it’s time general manager Lou Lamoriello start taking an active interest in searching for Brodeur’s heir. If he spent one fourth of the time he did trying to sign Kovalchuk last summer, the team would be in good shape moving forward, but maybe he doesn’t need to. The Vancouver Canucks currently have Cory Schneider playing one game to every four of Roberto Luongo’s. Surely he could pry him off Mike Gillis’s cold, not-so-dead hands for the right price. He wouldn’t necessarily turn the team around, but he would serve as a stop-gap measure of sorts, because at this point Brodeur is not only (figuratively) bleeding out his elbow but his greying hair as well. Right now everyone in Jersey should be able to relate. Even the bald Lamoriello. Especially Lamoriello.

"This cannot possibly end badly."

Henrik Proving His Name is Sedin and not Semin

In many ways, Washington Capitals sniper Alexander Semin has a lot in common with the Vancouver Canucks' Sedin twins. They're all red-headed, they each make their livings lighting the lamp (which is also red), and as a result they're also each insanely rich. However, it's still hard to picture Semin being able to score this goal, as Henrik did outwaiting New Jersey Devils goalie Martin Brodeur on Monday night. For starters, as evidenced by his lack of success in the first round against the Montreal Canadiens last playoffs (44 shots, 0 goals), he seems to lack the wherewithal to actually show up during crunch time. Coincidentally, Semin is also tied with the twins' former linemate Markus Naslund in terms of career shootout percentage with a relatively woeful 32.26%. Just a little food for thought pertaining to a guy whose star fell faster than fellow-Canuck Alex Burrows like a ton of bricks when the referee's watching. A glimpse into the future perhaps for the Cap?

Kovy Learns His Lesson... If Coach Scratches You, Show Him up the Next Game

New Jersey Devil Ilya Kovalchuk scored yesterday night in a 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers, but, despite his and his team’s struggles this year, his goal wasn’t the big surprise. It was that he was playing at all.

On Saturday night, in another loss, this time a 6-1 blowout to the offensively challenged Buffalo Sabres, Kovalchuk was a healthy scratch for what one can only assume was the first time in his highly esteemed yet otherwise uneventful career.



Now Kovalchuk doesn’t do healthy scratches, as they’re very much beneath a player of his calibre, i.e. one that makes an average salary of $6.66 million per year. That fact perhaps had at least a little something to do with rookie head coach John MacLean getting the bright idea to bench him for might very well not be the only time in his eventual 15-year stint with the Devils.

The exact reasons why Kovalchuk was scratched remain a mystery, but if you read between the lines and look to the patterns of selfishness strewn throughout his career you don’t need to be a Russian cosmonaut to get what the most likely one was. There has been some speculation that he missed a team meeting, but MacLean went on record as saying only that it was between him and Kovalchuk. For an alternative conspiracy theory, visit Hockeybuzz.

Whatever happened, as is always the case with any healthy scratch of a highly paid player, it was no doubt about sending a message. However, here are just a few things MacLean should have taken under consideration before he suffered from a power trip of epic proportions that clearly resulted in a concussion and several other mentally incapacitating injuries:

1) Taking your best player out of the line-up seriously hinders your chances of winning.

2) Starting your back-up goalie in Johan Hedberg halves those already slim chances.

3) When your team is in last place in the Eastern Conference, it isn’t necessarily any one player that is having that much of a negative impact on the team.

4) When your team is in last place in the Eastern Conference despite high expectations of a Stanley Cup victory, it’s most likely the coach that will get the first look as to what is going wrong.

5) Sitting your best player is one way to attract even more attention your way when it comes time for management to “shake things up”.

It’s clear that if the Kovalchuk signing doesn’t work out, management will be to blame for this whole debacle, but when the team is tied at the hip to Kovalchuk for over a decade it has the benefit of time on its side, in order to get things working just the right way. Until all other avenues are exhausted, most everyone else can be considered collateral damage waiting to happen, starting with MacLean.

Hey! Shouldn't Brodeur be in nets??? Someone's going to get fired over this, let me tell you!"

If you don’t think it’s possible for a head coach to be hired and fired so quickly, look to the Ottawa Senators for irrefutable proof. For the 2007-2008 season, the Senators hired John Paddock, who lasted just the one year before it became abundantly clear that he was the problem keeping Ottawa from making it back to the Stanley Cup Final. Then general manager Bryan Murray turned to Craig Hartsburg to start the following season behind the bench, but he only lasted 48 games before Murray realized that he wasn’t a good fit either. Finally, the Sens seem to have settled on Cory Clouston, but with the Senators currently in 14^th place, just ahead of the Devils, Murray might again begin to start feeling antsy, clueless to the fact that he’s been the one common factor in all three of the coaching changes. Well, that’s not true. Captain Daniel Alfredsson, fresh off his 1000^th career point on Friday night, has been around as well. But no one’s calling for him to be dealt.

Now this case study illustrates three main points: that the player is hardly ever the one that gets picked out of a line-up of the most culpable parties, that Bryan Murray still has his job despite hiring two head coaches that haven’t panned out and a third that may be on his last legs, and NHL coaches have lifespans shorter than that tub of yogurt in the back of your fridge, which you tend to keep around out of laziness because it’s not hurting anyone... until of course you take a spoonful one drunken night forgetting that it’s supposed to be white and vanilla and not coffee-flavoured.

I’m not saying a high-profile player shouldn’t be disciplined if he’s not doing things right, but if a coach does make that decision he should at least give his team the best chance at not letting it backfire. If MacLean was trying to prove a point, let’s say hypothetically that Kovalchuk is not bigger than the team, he should not have handed the goaltending reins over to Hedberg, who let in four of 15 shots in the game. I mean you can play Martin Brodeur. And it wasn’t as if Hedberg had been lights out in the other game he played this year either, allowing two goals on nine shots against the Washington Capitals two weeks earlier. Bottom line, if you were trying to tell Kovalchuk that the team doesn’t need him, all he did was see the team get humiliated without him one game, get put back into the line-up the following game, and then score the team’s only goal in that loss.

It’s clear that on paper the Devils are a better team with Kovalchuk, so until the Devils get back on track, MacLean had better learn to play this right or else the Devils will be without him in no time. I do hear the Senators might be looking for a new head coach sometime soon, so all is not lost.

Camera Gets Worst of Del Zotto Blast

I suppose Martin Brodeur has some things to be grateful for despite his team's early-season struggles, like, for instance, this Michael Del Zotto blast missing him and unleashing its wrath on an unsuspecting video camera instead. In all honesty, the shattered lens probably made it look worse than it really was, but still pretty impressive.

Preview: Why the Devils Will Beat the Habs Tonight

"You mean this isn't a practice? You can understand my confusion, though, right?"

If there was ever a cure-all for what’s ailing the New Jersey Devils’ early this season, it should come tonight in the form of the Montreal Canadiens.

The Devils are an abysmal 1-4-1 this season, which must be especially disappointing after the much-hyped and much-groaned-about off-season acquisition of superstar Ilya Kovalchuk (two goals, five points in six games). Enter the Habs and the fact that the Devils are 7-1 against them in the two teams’ past eight encounters and 16-4 in their last 20. This goes beyond psychological warfare. If there were such a thing, it would be a psychological natural disaster of epic proportions, most notably because, short of simply bracing for the inevitable, the Habs seem powerless to do anything to counteract the Devils’ dominance over them.

Like clockwork, it’s happened without fail nearly every time. The Devils either score the first goal or eventually get a lead and then collapse into the defensive shell for which they’re best known and the Habs in turn just collapse under the pressure. Sure, they might get their chances here and there, but for the most part it starts to look a lot like an entire team of Benoit Pouliots just going through the motions after a while. It's not exactly pretty to watch, even if you’re a Devils fan.

The only solace for Habs fans going into tonight is that when this most recent woeful eight-game stretch started two seasons ago, they had 10 different regulars heading to unrestricted free agency. The eventual acquisitions of Mike Cammalleri, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta, etc. make this a very different team that theoretically shouldn’t let supposed curses and superstitious nonsense get them down. And then there’s Devils goalie Martin Brodeur who always seems to bring his ‘A’ game against his hometown team. Brodeur’s got a career 38-16-5 record against the Habs with a 1.78 goals-against average. With numbers like that, you’d be justified to question their accuracy and my ability to properly research historical statistics. But I assure you the only thing worth questioning is the Devils’ sub-par record so far this season.

Technically, at 3-1-1, the Habs are the better team, but on paper the Devils are in spite of their inexperienced defense with Anton Volchenkov and Bryce Salvador both injured. It doesn’t matter how it gets done, meaning while the Habs will likely outplay Jersey at the start the end result of this game is almost pre-ordained.

Brodeur will get his swagger back if only temporarily at the ripe old age of 38, Kovalchuk will get back to the point-per-game pace to which he’s grown accustomed, Zach Parise will lead his team to victory, and the Habs will fold like a fresh load of laundry done by your mother at Thanksgiving, your freshman year at college. The one thing the Habs will be thankful for after tonight will be the two months until their next game against the Devils.