I’ve said it a number of times that when I look at NJ, I see a team that is missing something that makes them a good team, I don’t know what it is but something is missing. I do however know what isn’t missing and that is quit. While I look at NJ as a mediocre team, there is just no quit in these guys.
Down 2-0 last night, the Devils immediately answered and then battled back to force a 2-2 tie, overtime and ultimately another shootout. The Devils have been lights out when it comes to the skills competition this season. After last night’s victory, they are 7-1 in the shootout this season. That’s 7 extremely important points. Without those 7 points, the Devils would be somewhere near 13th or 14th place in the conference. With those 7 points, we are currently 8th. 
We made a number of defensive mistakes last night that got NJ into a 2-0 hole but I thought Marty played a very solid game. The first goal our defense hung him out there by Larsson throwing the puck to the middle of the ice where it was picked off and a simple pass and shoot play made it unstoppable for Marty. The second was another defensive goof by Talinder and Versteeg just beat him to the puck and put in yet another shorthanded goal.
But like I said, there is no quit in this team. A little less than a minute later, Elias put some life into this team and cut the lead to 2-1. Later in the third, Parise tied the game and the Devils were able to keep the Panthers off the scoreboard the rest of the way.
This game was a little chippy as we saw Janssen get into a fight with Barch early on and then Kovalchuk and Parise get into a big old mess at the end of the second. Clarkson was close to getting into a few situations as well.
All in all a great win because any time you come out of back to back games and skate away with 4 points, you can’t really complain about much.
Next game is Friday where #27 gets raised to the rafters.
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