Devils may care

After easy run, Jersey, Brodeur face tough test in Ottawa

The Mighty Ducks ambushed the top two teams in their conference. The Senators downed a gritty Flyers teams in the second round, not to mention their own playoff demons, to punch their ticket for the Eastern Conference finals. The winner of Thursday night's deciding game between Minnesota and Vancouver Thursday night will have survived two wild and hard-fought seven-game series.

This leaves New Jersey. While the rest of the final four field stumbles into the party battle-scarred and disheveled, the Devils look like the guy in the Dockers commercial who emerges from a car wreck with unwrinkled, pristine pants. If there is such a thing as an easy playoff run, the Devils have had it. They've played only 10 games, dispatching the Bruins in the first round and the Lightning in the second with a pair of five-game series. New Jersey had a week off before facing Tampa Bay and will have had another six days of rest by the time the Eastern finals begin in Ottawa on Saturday. Idle hands truly have been the Devils' playthings this postseason.

They're in the conference finals for the third time in four years, but we still don't have a handle on just how good the Devils are. Neither Boston nor Tampa Bay, one-line teams both, provided much of a test for Pat Burns' bunch. New Jersey's gameplan was relatively simple in those series: Whenever Joe Thornton or Vincent Lecavalier was on the ice, Burns summoned the stellar checking line centered by John Madden. That was usually enough to muzzle the Bruins' and Lightning's scoring opportunities.

Life won't be so easy against the Senators, whose depth at forward, especially on the right side, is scary. Do you send the Madden line out to check right wing Marian Hossa? That leaves Daniel Alfredsson and Martin Havlat, two other top-notch offensive threats at right wing, free to roam against New Jersey's less-skilled defensive forwards. As Burns said this week, "There are a lot of guys to worry about."

Which means it's Marty Time for the Devils. It's strange to say that a goaltender with three shutouts and the second-lowest goals against average in the playoffs (1.51) hasn't been a huge factor for his team. He was brilliant in the triple-overtime series-clincher against the Lightning, but in many ways Martin Brodeur has been given a free pass this postseason both on and off the ice. He has seen an average of just 27 shots a game -- compare that to the 37 per game that have rocketed toward Anaheim's Jean-Sebastien Giguere -- and hasn't often been under fire for extended periods. (Yet another testament to how good New Jersey's team defense has been.)

Brodeur has also been able to downplay and deflect questions about his personal life. When a French-language tabloid published an account of his broken marriage and alleged infidelities a few weeks ago, the story threatened to become the kind of distraction that can poison a dressing room. Brodeur has handled the situation well, and it has hardly caused a ripple around the Devils' dressing room. But he's about to become a focal point. Playing in Canada for the first time this postseason and facing the media from his native Quebec make it likely he'll hear repeated questions about his off-the-ice activities.

The Devils don't have the offensive firepower to match the Senators, and Ottawa's depth will tax their defense. After cruising through two series on autopilot New Jersey will lean on Brodeur, their backbone, to get them back to the Stanley Cup finals. It's a tired theme, but, as Flyers head coach Ken Hitchcock says, "A goaltender's reputation is all based on the playoffs." Brodeur has won two Cups and his rep -- on the ice, anyway -- is impeccable. He'll get another chance to enhance it in this series.

Sports Illustrated staff writer Stephen Cannella covers the NHL for the magazine and will contribute frequently to SI.com throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs.

 

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