LOS ANGELES — There’s something achingly, poignantly glorious about these last Three Cup Musketeers, the lone survivors, fighting to keep the sun from finally setting on the empire.
They are the last three Devils Stanley Cup winners with this team, Martin Brodeur, 40, Patrik Elias 36, and now, Petr Sykora, 35.
They are the last three to come back from 1-3 on the 2000 Flyers, trying to come back from 0-3 on the 2012 Kings tonight, defying the final demise of their revived, thought-dead dynasty, now gasping its very last breath.
They are the last links to the championships that stopped coming nine years ago. Wednesday night, they will man the barricades in the near-hopeless attempt to win another Cup, 70 years since the last-and-only team, the 1942 Leafs, triumphed from 0-3 in the finals.
“I know it could be the last time,” said Brodeur, the best Devil in the finals. “It’s not going to take away the fun I’m having. I’m fortunate to have a chance like that late in my career. You’re not going to win them all, but we’re still alive and we’re going to try to make this a series, make it a little more fun.
“We’ve done a lot of great things for this organization to get back to where we feel we need to be every single year. This is what I was expecting, to finish my career, my last few years, to play on a winning team. Regardless of what happens I’m really proud of what we accomplished.”
Brodeur made clear this run, regardless of outcome, has only increased his intent to play next season, lockout willing.
“Because it was so hard last year, I came in open-minded, just wanting to have fun because it was probably the worst season I had last year, personally and as an organization,” Brodeur said. “So, to hope that we would accomplish what we did this year would be a little far-fetched.
“Now we’re here in the Stanley Cup Finals. I didn’t expect that at the start of the season, for sure.”
For Sykora, who had to earn a job via training camp tryout, tonight is his chance to again be a playoff hero, cracking his sixth finals, now most among actives since Nicklas Lidstrom retired.
Sykora is only 2-2-4 in 15 games, yet with the Devils threatening the 60-year-old record for fewest goals in a best-of-seven finals (two, 1952 Canadiens), it’s all hands on deck.
Among his 32 career playoff goals, Sykora scored in quadruple-overtime and double-overtime for the 2003 Ducks, later beaten by the Devils for their last Cup. He also scored in triple-OT with Pittsburgh’s 2009 Cup-winners. He scored both his goals this spring against the Flyers.
“We haven’t scored, and he’s a guy who doesn’t need a lot of looks to stick one in the net. So he’s an option,” Devils coach Pete DeBoer said.
On the big stage again, Sykora would have the chance for heroics.
“I’ll try to play my best game. I just want to take it back to New Jersey [for Game 5 Saturday]. It doesn’t matter how,” Sykora said.
Then there’s Elias, the franchise’s leading playoff and regular season goal-scorer and point-getter. Skating with Sykora, and Dainius Zubrus, might inspire him.
“You’re looking for some kind of spark, trying to create some chances and Sykkie can do that,” Elias said.
“We’re in the finals, we’re still playing. If we look too far ahead, it’s a pretty hard mountain to climb. We have to go out there [tonight] and keep living.”
Before the suns sets one last time on the Three Cup Musketeers.
Henrik Lundqvist shut them out twice in the first three of the Rangers’ series. The Devils won the second game, true, but the combined score in those first three was Rangers 8, Devils 3.
Here, now, it is Kings 8, Devils 2, combined score.