Marty gets the big prize

Devils goalie more than happy to trade Conn for Cup

Martin Brodeur got the prize he was looking for. AP

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (Ticker) -- The Stanley Cup finals were a microcosm of Martin Brodeur's career.

The New Jersey Devils goaltender tied a record with three shutouts in the seven-game victory over the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. He capped the series with his seventh shutout of this year's playoffs, breaking another record. Yet the Conn Smythe Trophy as postseason MVP went to Ducks counterpart Jean-Sebastien Giguere.

Not that Brodeur's complaining.

"It's kind of easy when you win the Cup to be satisfied about it," he said. "I'm sure if I lost, it would have been a little harder on me. But knowing that I have the Stanley Cup, I'm not worried about the Conn Smythe. [Giguere] deserves it."

It's the third Stanley Cup in nine years for the Devils and Brodeur, who won praise from the man who beat him out for the Conn Smythe Trophy.

"Probably the best in the game right now, since Patrick [Roy] retired," Giguere said. "I think he's probably the one taking over right now at being the best."

The numbers back up Giguere's opinion. With the retirement of Roy, Brodeur leads active goalies with 83 playoff wins and is fourth with 365 in the regular season. He's a close second among active goalies with 64 regular-season shutouts and second behind Roy all-time with 20 in the playoffs.

Brodeur's numbers get better in big games. In 24 appearances in the Stanley Cup finals, he is 15-9 with three shutouts and a 1.87 goals-against average that ranks third in the modern era. In eight career Game 7s, he is 5-3 with a 1.68 GAA and one shutout.

On Monday, Brodeur stopped all 24 shots, just two days after watching from the bench as Anaheim put the finishing touches on a 5-2 romp.

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"People were saying in the last two games that he has to be better, and I knew Marty was going to be better tonight," Devils captain Scott Stevens said. "He's a guy that you know will bounce back from anything that goes bad. He can get his mind back on focus and get the job done."

Again, the numbers support Stevens' opinion.

Six times, Brodeur has surrendered as many as five goals in a playoff game. In each case, he came back and won the following game, three by shutout.

It's that ability to bounce back - a trait shared by Roy, his goaltending idol -- that puts Brodeur at the top of Giguere's list.

His performance Monday reduced to a hiccup his spectacular blunder in Game 3, when he went out to play the puck but dropped his stick and had a dump-in by Sandis Ozolinsh carom off the stick and into the net.

Brodeur laughed it off, asking reporters, "You didn't think it was funny?" Two nights later, he battled Giguere through 60 scoreless minutes before former teammate Steve Thomas beat him off a long rebound in overtime.

"You see some guys squat down on the ground and look down at their glove like, 'Oh, my God, what did I just do?' He never, ever gives you the feeling that we're in trouble because something bad happened, whether it be his fault or somebody else's fault," New Jersey center John Madden said earlier in the series.

Always a workhorse, Brodeur played 102 regular-season and playoff games this season. And bouncing back became a little more difficult as the postseason dragged on while he quietly battled injuries.

"Definitely, when you play in the playoffs, you've got to go through injuries a little bit, from knees to groins and stuff like that," he said. "I think when the game started, I felt pretty good. I think it's on the off days and in practices that I really took it easy."

Brodeur also has been dealing with well-publicized marital problems that helped make his third Stanley Cup special.

"It is probably a little better, just the way that we did it," he said. "It was a bumpy ride."

Brodeur adds this latest Stanley Cup to a resume that includes a gold medal at the 2002 Olympics. But the only individual honor he has won was the 1994 Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year.

That might change later this month since the 31-year-old Montreal native is a finalist for the Hart and Vezina Trophies. He could join Jacques Plante and Hasek, whose postseason shutout record he broke Monday, as the only players to win both in the same year.

Still, there are those who attribute Brodeur's success to the defensive system behind which he plays.

He was talking about the team but easily could have been talking about himself when he said, "Ten years, 20 years down the road, people will look back on what we have accomplished and they will say if they feel we deserve to be a dynasty or not."

 

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