Team Played, Won Together
The Detroit Red Wings were impressed with the New Jersey Devils’ team concept.
“The thing they do best is get you off your game,” defenseman Bob Rouse said after the Devils won the Stanley Cup by completing a fourgame sweep of the Red Wings with a 5-2 win Saturday night.
“They played defense better than (we) and that’s not something that happened to us during the season.”
Detroit captain Steve Yzerman called the Devils “the toughest team I played against” this year.
Keith Primeau called the Devils “a tremendous hockey club. They’re a deserving champion.”
Devlishly good
The Devils were the first team to win the Stanley Cup without scoring six goals in a game since the 1976 Montreal Canadiens, who were coached by Scotty Bowman.
Bowman remembered how good that Montreal team was, and thinks the Devils may be as good on defense.
“When I was with Montreal, we swept Philadelphia four straight after they’d won two Cups,” Bowman said. “That was a strong defensive game, but now there’s a little more offense in the league.
“So if you can shut down teams and hold them to fewer than two goals, it’s not just goaltending. The goaltender (Martin Brodeur) was very solid, but in all areas of the game, it’s one of the better performances I’ve seen.”
Two of a kind
The NHL and NBA champions each won four series this year without benefit of home advantages in any series.
Golden goaltender
New Jersey’s Brodeur led goalies in every significant statistical category in the playoffs, and said he owes a lot of his success to goaltending coach Jacques Caron.
From Caron’s perspective, Brodeur has been a delight to coach.
“He’s the type of kid you’d like to have for a son,” Caron said of the 23-year-old Brodeur. “He’s very respectful.”Caron said Brodeur’s recent fatherhood has actually helped with his goaltending.”I think the responsibility has made him more mature,” Caron said, “more aware of life.”
Brodeur, the NHL’s rookie of the year last season, had a 1.67 goalsagainst average in the postseason with a .927 save percentage, 16 wins and three shutouts.
Perhaps Brodeur’s biggest asset is the relaxed demeanor that helps him stay cool in the heat of action, and helped the Devils sweep the Red Wings in the finals.
“I just get the feeling I could go in (to the locker room) and have a ham sandwich with him before a game and it wouldn’t bother him,” says Darren Pang, a former goaltender, and now a broadcaster.
Togetherness
New Jersey forward Claude Lemieux, who won a Stanley Cup with the Montreal Canadiens in 1986, said this Cup-winning Devils team is the best on which he’s played.
“The team we had in Montreal when we won the Cup, we were a close team, but it was team that was put together very quickly. There were a lot of young players and a lot of guys who got together toward the end of the season. I was called up,” he said.
Rolling a seven
In addition to their record 10 road victories in the playoffs, the Devils have won seven straight away from home, tying the 1980 New York Islanders for the NHL record.