From the Final in 2012 to Finality in 2013.
And when Martin Brodeur was asked if he could define the difference in the Devils from one year to the next in the moments following regular-season Game 45 elimination from playoff contention with yesterday’s 4-1 Garden defeat to the Rangers, the all-time goaltender didn’t hesitate.
“There’s Zach,” he said, meaning captain Zach Parise, the first-line winger who left the Eastern Conference champions behind in July to accept a 13-year, $98 million free agent offer from his home state Wild. “That’s a top-three forward we never got back.”
The Devils won after Alex Mogilny left as a free agent. They won after Bobby Holik left as a free agent. They managed to be a very competitive club for a while after Scott Niedermayer and Brian Rafalski left as free agents.
But that was a different time. This Devils’ team just was not deep enough to compensate for Parise leaving the only NHL home he had ever known to go home to Minnesota.
Parise’s defection was actually one of three daggers to the heart of the team that played with no heart whatsoever yesterday after yielding the first goal to Ryan Callahan on the match’s first shift.
“We knew this was going to come eventually and when things didn’t go our way, we quit,” said Brodeur, who somehow has won only 12 of his 36 mask-to-mask regular season confrontations against Henrik Lundqvist. “We lost our composure.”
So OK, the team lost Parise in the off-season. Strike One. Then, after opening 10-3-4, the Devils lost Brodeur to a back injury for 13 games, during which they went 3-8-2. Strike two. And finally, having stabilized following the goaltender’s return, the club then lost Ilya Kovalchuk to a shoulder injury on Mar. 23, thereafter immediately losing 10 straight (0-6-4). Strike three.
They’re out.
The Garden fans serenaded Brodeur pretty much from start to finish, mocking him and then his team once the score was settled, chants of “Season’s Over!” replacing the familiar sing-song “Maaaarteeee …”
But honestly, the score wasn’t settled from last year to this for the Rangers, who were eliminated by the Devils in the conference finals a year ago following a first-place finish in the regular season.
Seasons changed and so did the stakes.
“It didn’t matter if [we were eliminated] by Florida or the Rangers,” Brodeur said. “It wasn’t a big deal [that it happened at the Garden].”
In 1973, the Rangers defeated the Bruins in the first round of the playoffs. That was the year after the Bruins had beaten the Blueshirts in the Cup Final. One year did not make up for the last. Yesterday did not make up for last May.
Revenge may be a dish served cold, but not on this platter of ice, not yesterday for a Rangers team driving to the playoffs in a bus without rear-view mirrors.
The Blueshirts are 8-2-1 in their last 11, demonstrating superiority over inferior teams in the wake of last Tuesday’s hiccup in Philadelphia. They are in eighth place, three points ahead of the Jets, with each club having three games to go, the first time the Rangers have been three points clear of a playoff spot since the morning of March 8.
And with their remaining matches against the sad-sack Panthers, Hurricanes and — yes — the Devils again, a sixth-place finish is within reach.
There is nothing, however, for the Devils to grasp but their own individual failures in stretches of adversity. Patrik Elias, David Clarkson and Travis Zajac scored once apiece in the 10-game losing streak while Adam Henrique did not score at all. Anton Volchenkov and Henrik Tallinder bumbled their way into amnesty-buyout candidacy.
“We just didn’t do enough,” Zajac said. “Plain and simple, we didn’t get the job done.”
And so the Devils are out. It’s the second time in three years for this team that has gone from the Final in 2012 to Finality in 2013.