They’re halfway to making history
Maybe the Devils don’t need to board a plane for their flight to Los Angeles. Maybe the Devils can simply ride Air Brodeur across the country for tomorrow night’s Game 6 against the Kings.
They are only halfway home, have done only half of the heavy lifting necessary before they can do the lifting every single one of them lives and strives for, the lifting of the 34.5-pound chalice, but if the Devils are only halfway home now, that is somewhere noteworthy when only five days ago they were going nowhere fast.
“It’s a different kind of thing to get yourself ready for this kind of game, two in a row,” Martin Brodeur said after yet another throwback performance in his team’s 2-1 Game 5 victory at the Rock that makes tomorrow night necessary. “It drains you and takes a lot out of you, but it’s worth it.
“They [the Kings] have been so close, I’m sure it’s getting to them a little bit, all the chances to end it.”
Two chances down and two chances to go for the Kings, who carried the play most of the way, yet were thwarted for the second time in the four nights by Brodeur, whose own team mustered just four shots in the first period and three in the third.
There is history in the making here; history that can be made by the team with the pedigree, the team with the all-time goaltender who has reached all the way back perhaps even to 17 years ago when he won his first of three Stanley Cups as a 23-year-old.
“I wish I was that eloquent so I could phrase it for you [for what Marty means to us],” said coach Pete DeBoer, who has maintained equanimity throughout this tournament. “His performance speaks for itself. The timing of it with us 10-1 in Games 4-through-7 in our series is a testament to how he enjoys the pressure.”
Brodeur faced only 25 shots, but it was the timing of the saves, just the way it’s always been throughout a career during which he spent the first 11 years playing behind the Hall of Fame Great Scotts on defense — Stevens and Niedermayer.
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