Devils come out flat,drop Game 5....

The New Jersey Devils were outplayed,outhustled and outthought tonight in Florida.
The result equalled a 3-0 loss and are now facing elimination against the Panthers having fallen behind 3-2 in the Eastern Conference playoff series.
Since their scoring was non-existent,there is little else to say.
Game 6 at the Rock on Tuesday night....

Hell Raisers

1) Martin Brodeur was caught out of the net in a communication snafu that allowed Scottie Upshall to score into an open net to make the game 2-0 and put the game away.
Other than that,Brodeur was the Devils best player and kept the team in the game and gave an inept offense a chance to win.
The play looks bad and it was,but do not overlook the contributions of Brodeur over the course of the game for just one bad decision....

2) Too many penalties.
Six in fact and that led to the first Florida goal on the power play by Kris Versteeg.
Even though five of the six were killed off,the toll that it takes on the penalty killers is huge on the legs.

3) Faceoffs.
It seemed that the Devils simply lost far too many of them,especially in the Florida zone.
Anytime that a key faceoff took place,the Panthers usually won it.

4) Zach Parise was almost invisible with one shot and Ilya Kovalchuk was not exactly a huge help either.
That line was a decent part of the lack of offense in the loss.
You expect your best players to step up and in this one,neither Parise or Kovalchuk did anything that resembled that....

5) Had to watch the Florida announcers on the NHL Network feed.
Awful.
My favorite line was one of them offering this on the Brodeur mistake “the drool of regret into the pillow of remorse”.
Someone has been reading too much poetry lately...

6)  This rat thing with the Florida fans has to be stopped.
Tons of these things being thrown on the ice is just asking for trouble and the league tolerating this crap needs to be stopped.
The fact that the team sanctions this nonsense is beyond belief...

7) The Devils will need to win two games in a row to win the series.
The Devils have not won two playoff games in a row over their last 27 playoffs starts.
Time to end that streak!

Photo Credit:AP Photo