After three days of training camp, the Devils’ captain is reduced to unprompted gallows humor.
“Maybe I’m getting dealt,” Jamie Langenbrunner said after skating as the team’s fifth-line center yesterday.
Referring to his no-trade clause, Langenbrunner added, “They haven’t asked me yet. They have to.”
He was far less than half-serious, but Langenbrunner, the heart and soul of last season’s team, is puzzled why Brendan Shanahan has been skating in his usual spot alongside Zach Parise and Travis Zajac.
Head coach Jacques Lemaire has to keep cautioning against reading into the early line groupings because he continues using Shanahan in Langenbrunner’s spot. Langenbrunner is expected to sit out tonight while Shanahan skates with Parise and Zajac in the exhibition opener against the Rangers in Newark.
“The lines that were really good last year, they’ll be the same lines this year,” Lemaire said. “If they’re not good, they won’t be the same lines.”
The Devils are expecting a signing or a trade, particularly for a center, and the absence of Patrik Elias (groin) may force Lemaire to alter Brent Sutter’s lines to achieve scoring balance. And Shanahan, the NHL’s leading active goal scorer, isn’t a bad choice to play with Zajac and Parise if Langenbrunner is shifted.
“I’m not reading anything into it,” Langenbrunner said. “You just never know what’s going to happen. I’ve been through enough training camps to know that my line on Sept. 15 isn’t necessarily my line on Oct. 3.”
Langenbrunner, 34, is coming off a career season, recording 29 goals, 40 assists and a plus-25 rating, after missing the start of the 2007-08 season after hernia surgery. He had a goal and an assist in the opening game of last spring’s playoff series with the Hurricanes, but suffered a knee injury in Game 2. He underwent arthroscopic knee surgery and missed only three games before returning to action for the final two games, adding another goal.
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Hartford and Lowell, the Rangers and Devils farm teams, will play at 1 p.m. today in Newark with free admission. . . . Among the rookies expected to play for Devils tonight are forwards Niclas Bergfors, Patrice Cormier, Vladimir Zharkov, Ilkka Pikkarainen and defensemen Alexander Urbom and Mark Fraser. Defenseman Cory Murphy is also likely to play.