If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t have been able to tell which team was playing for the second night in a row, and which team was coming in rested and on a five-game winning streak.
Last night, it was the Hurricanes who had more jump as they snapped the Devils’ five-game win streak with a 4-2 victory last night at the Prudential Center.
“They played extremely well,” said Martin Brodeur, who allowed three goals on 24 shots. “I thought their energy level at times was pretty amazing for them playing back-to-back, and us being rested.”
During the streak, four of the Devils’ five wins came against division opponents, and they were ripe for a letdown.
“It’s always hard to come back and play a team after a rivalry or they aren’t close to you in the standings,” Brodeur said. “It’s a good hockey team over there. We haven’t seen them this year and they showed us a lot.”
Though the Devils were outplayed for the first two periods, they scored the game’s first goal, but had to wait almost 3 1/2 minutes before it counted. Ilya Kovalchuk shot a laser which hit the crossbar and the referee signaled no goal. Play did not stop until there was 49 seconds left in the period, when it was reviewed and counted as the puck clearly crossed the line. The elapsed time from the goal until the stoppage (3 minutes, 21 seconds) had to be replayed. It was Kovalchuk’s fifth of the season and third in the past four games.
Carolina, which beat the Islanders 6-4 on Monday night, came out firing, peppering Brodeur with 20 shots through two periods and scoring twice in the second period. The first was a power-play goal by Jussi Jokinen, who scored on a one-timer on a pass from Joe Corvo less than two minutes in the stanza. The Hurricanes then took a 2-1 lead with 1:31 left in the period when Patrick Dwyer tipped a Jay Harrison shot past Brodeur.
The Devils woke up in the third period, as Ryan Carter tied the game 1:34 in when Hurricanes defender Justin Faulk whiffed on a pass attempt leaving Carter with the puck in front of the net and beat Cam Ward five-hole.
But the Devils’ penalty kill, which had killed off 26 of 28 penalties in their last six games, allowed two on five chances last night, including the game-winner to Jiri Tlusty, who redirected an Eric Staal shot from the right side — which also hit Anton Volchenkov — past Brodeur. Tlusty added an empty netter with 34 seconds left to seal the win.
“That first power play goal went off of [Greene] and the last one went off of [Volchenkov], and I think that’s kind of an indication of how the game was going for us,” captain Bryce Salvador said. “When you are sitting on the top, every team is picking up their game and they want to beat you. With the effort we had tonight, we didn’t deserve to get the points.”
Coach Pete DeBoer agreed his team lacked discipline and was outplayed on the power play and penalty kill.
“We lost the special teams battle tonight and we lost the game,” he said. “Their power play got two goals. Through our [winning] streak, we had won the special teams battle almost every night. Tonight we lost those areas of the game and couldn’t recover from that.”