NHL

Time to clean up Devils mess

Oh, the excuses have been there for the Dev ils, all right, from general manager Lou Lamoriello’s inexplicable failure to clean up the salary-cap mess before the start of the season, to rookie coach’s John MacLean’s clear inability to command respect or install a coherent system, to injuries to Zach Parise, Martin Brodeur, Jamie Langenbrunner, Brian Rolston and Anton Volchenkov.

The ultimate problem, though, in this China Syndrome of a season is the team took every excuse and used every excuse through nearly three months of dragging the sweater through the mud in the most shameful display of sloth in franchise history.

These guys in this room of one-time (or, more literally, three-time) champions aren’t innocent bystanders here. They are co-conspirators who are an affront to the logo and their heritage, and who should be ashamed of themselves for taking the easy way out night after night after night.

This isn’t about the crying need for mobile, puck-moving defensemen who can execute the breakout, lead the rush and join the attack. This isn’t about moving Ilya Kovalchuk from left to right or having him on the wrong side of the power play. This isn’t about roster misconstruction featuring a $2.7 million third-liner in David Clarkson.

This isn’t about X’s and O’s, either, though it is about the zero respect the Devils players have shown for one another, for the franchise, and for the fan base, and it is about the zero fight from the team when it came time to make some sort of stand.

These players aren’t simply victims of organizational dysfunction. They are perpetrators who have made sure to let everyone know how they aren’t used to this, how tough this has been for them, how everyone should just feel so sorry for their plight.

The Devils act as if they are Chilean miners enduring the ordeal of being trapped underground for 69 days rather than hockey players trying to cope with a bad start to their season.

They have been throwing a pity party for themselves right from the start. These alleged professionals racking in millions have wallowed in their own misery, waiting for relief or the end of the season, whichever were to come first.

So ding dong, the coach is gone, the team quitting on MacLean the way a better team quit on Claude Julien in 2007 and a better team before that quit on Larry Robinson in 2002, and an even much better team than that quit on Robbie Ftorek in 2000.

Johnny Mac is out, obviously the wrong person at the wrong time at the wrong place in franchise history for the job. Jacques Lemaire is back as a caretaker, and now it’s time for players to go, it’s time for Langenbrunner to waive his no-trade, it’s time for Arnott to waive his no-move, it’s time for Lamoriello to clean up the room and the roster regardless of the return.

The proverb, pride goes before a fall, is subject to interpretation, but not as it applies to the 2010-11 Devils, for pride has left the franchise, it has left the room and it has left the team all right, and that’s not on Lamoriello, that’s not on MacLean, that’s not on Gary Bettman and that’s not on Richard Bloch.

That’s on the players. That’s on the team that isn’t one. That’s on the athletes who have shamed the sweater and everything it is supposed to represent.

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Reality television never was more real than in the second episode of HBO’s “24/7” when the network’s cameras and microphones caught invariably incompetent and laughably haughty referee Bill McCreary missing a Zdeno Chara high stick to the mouth of Mike Green, then lecturing/threatening the victim for mildly complaining about it.

The Caps, certainly the more compelling subject of the docudrama, have heard for two years that the regular season is pretty well meaningless following their playoff ousters, so it’s a bit ridiculous now to pretend that their current troubles are critical to their success this spring.

It can go either way for the Caps, who probably wouldn’t be wise to leave their postseason fate to their pair of young and younger goaltenders, but that of course will be the call of GM George McPhee, he of the film noire treatment by HBO.

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The Mets have a better chance of Oliver Perez throwing a three-hit shutout to win the World Series than they do of getting the NHL to award the Winter Classic to Citi Field.

Christmas card snapshot. Elite Eight: 1. Pittsburgh; 2. Philadelphia; 3. Detroit; 4. Vancouver; 5. Montreal; 6. Dallas; 7. Washington; 8. Nashville.

Credit Shock Jock Gary Bettman for subjecting Charles Wang and Garth Snow to questions that needed to be asked on his radio show Thursday afternoon even if the answers weren’t quite satisfactory

This just in: The Islanders have revoked the commissioner’s credential.

larry.brooks@nypost.com