RALEIGH, N.C. — Martin Brodeur playfully asked what else he could have done for the Devils last night. Coach Peter DeBoer had an idea.
“If he would’ve got in a fight, he would’ve done a little bit of everything for us,” DeBoer said.
Brodeur scored his third career goal and made 17 saves in his first game in a month, leading the Devils to a 4-1 win over the Hurricanes.
Brodeur had been out since Feb. 21 with a pinched nerve in his upper back and neck. The Devils went 3-8-2 in his absence.
“You know him coming back, he’s going to give you a boost,” the Devils’ Travis Zajac said. “But he was just awesome today.”
Peter Harrold, Adam Henrique and Andrei Loktionov also scored to help the Devils snap a three-game losing streak.
Jeff Skinner had the Hurricanes’ lone goal while Dan Ellis made 19 saves.
Brodeur got credit for the game’s first goal when Carolina’s Jordan Staal passed the puck to the point from behind the net after a delayed penalty call against the Devils’ Marek Zidlicky.
The pass missed intended target Tim Gleason and bounced off the boards near center ice. Ellis had already skated toward the bench because of the delayed penalty and couldn’t get back in time to prevent the puck from sliding into the net.
Because he was the last Devils player to touch the puck, Brodeur got credit for the score. With Carolina’s Alexander Semin in the penalty box, it counted as a power-play goal.
According to Elias Sports Bureau, Brodeur is the first goalie to score a power-play goal since Evgeni Nabokov for San Jose in 2002.
“When the puck went in the net, I was like, ‘Woah, what happened there?’“ said Brodeur.
“I didn’t even know we had a delayed penalty or anything. So it was a little surprising, and then [Ilya Kovalchuk] said, ‘You scored the goal!’ With a Russian accent, too.”