Snowman On Fire

I ended up with a free half hour yesterday, thanks to an unusually quick doctor’s appointment. Seizing upon the good fortune, and the proximity to South Mountain Arena, I popped into the last half hour of the Devils practice. Watched the first power play unit work out a bit, and saw lots of practice on play below the hash. Heard some shouts when shots missed wide, and it’s a good sign when it’s someone other than the coaches doing the yelping. As the players were leaving the ice, Elias fired two buckets worth of pucks into the net, one-timing a store’s inventory of rubber with perfect consistency. It was a thing of beauty to watch.

Practice makes perfect. We say it to our kids repeatedly, and we mean it. With tonight’s game against Montreal tied 1-1 deep into overtime, the Devils had a face off in the attack zone. Gomez won the draw, to Rafalski, to Elias, who just exercised the muscle memory from yesterday. A thing of beauty to watch, especially with a lonely snowman — all of 8 seconds — left on the OT clock.

Elias has 5 points in 3 games in a 6-day span. Zajac is playing Calder-quality hockey, but the rookie to watch is Johnny Oduya. Quick hands, quick feet, and a great view of the ice. It’s remarkably hard to find out anything about him, other than he was drafted by the Capitals in 2001, and never signed a contract, playing in his native Sweden instead. hockeydb.com shows only two players with that surname, one of whom happens to be his brother, Fred “Knuckles” Oduya. So if he says his brother used to fight with him, there’s some circumstantial evidence to that effect. Aside from showing up with 3 assists and a handful of penalties in online reports, he’s hard to find via search engine (the brotherly love reference was 3 pages Google-deep).

Here’s the tip-off to why he’s a winner — I asked him for an autograph as he was leaving the ice (which he gladly provided), and he gave me a look like (a) he was surprised I knew his name (b) he was surprised someone wanted his autograph and (c) that it was pretty cool. Thanks, Johnny, it was pretty cool of you, attitude and style wise.

Elias is now the Devils’ leading scorer with 24 points. Ten of them have come in the last six games, eight of them in the five games that filled the first third of this month. Should he continue this torrid pace, he’s on track for a career high in points (perhaps breaking the century mark for the first time). But you get the feeling it’s more about winning and playing good hockey than individual statistics; the team is playing well.

The Bruins game can be summarized in two goals: Pandolfo’s off of a quick pass, when he didn’t quite have control of the puck but he fired before the goalie squared or the “D” collapsed, and Elias’ from an equally pretty pass. This is the hockey I love (to paraphrase Tretiak): passing, quick wrist shots, accuracy and forethought. A wrist rocket going top shelf is going to light the lamp more than the booming slap shot that looks and sounds great but misses wide.

Now it’s time for six in a row to shuffle off with Buffalo before a rematch with the bad news bears of Boston. With the games this exciting, and with Patrik firing on all of his dumpling-fueled cylinders, it’s worth getting in trouble at a staff meeting for catching the game webcast from the west coast.

The Gordie Howe hat trick is a goal, assist and a fight. Our little hockey family hat trick has turned into all three of our teams — the big Devils, the youth Devils, and the HNA Ice Dragons winning in the same weekend. Finally happened in the 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday nights.

With all of the calls for Elias to be a better leader, and for the Devils to play better, how about 4 points in 2 games, first star of the game on Friday, and two big wins against two teams that had some measure of momentum? Notch 2 W for C 26 (it’s neither Ray Borque-esque numerology or Kabbalistic interpretation of the sports texts, it’s just shorthand). Our little Devils lost a game that got away from them on Saturday, only to come back Sunday morning and win 7-1 in a game where 10 different players were on the scoresheet (not counting penalties).

Last night the Ice Dragons looked to even our record at 3-3, against a team that had beaten us last season 2-1 when yours truly missed his check twice for the tying and winning goals. 8 seconds into the game, our opponents took the opening faceoff in a 2-on-0 into the net against our backup (and rather helpful) goaltender. That was his warmup; he then pitched 44 minutes and 52 seconds of shutout hockey as the Dragons rolled 7-1 as well.

I ended up on the scoresheet as well, but not in the scoring column — a bit of bump and shove along the boards resulted in a hooking penalty (hey, good enough for Elias, good enough for me) and a few slashes across the left hand have made typing somewhat interesting this morning. In the worse for wear and tear department, though, is my living proof that there are no elastic collisions of meat: My one serious shot on goal came as I skated headfirst into a defenseman much more solid than me, and I literally saw stars after I bounced off of him and the ice. But chip in a little backchecking (I slowed down a 2-on-0 going the other way), sprinkle in two shots on net and my penalty and that’s enough of a hat trick for me.

All due credit to WC Fields, he’d rather be in Philadelphia (as opposed to his final resting place), and I believe most teams in the NHL feel that with the Flyers looking one step out of the grave, they’d rather be visting in Philadelphia as well. So it goes for the Devils tonight, as they venture down the Turnpike, somewhat pumped up (we hope) by a solid 5-2 win over the other half of Pennsylvania’s hockey contingent last night.

What a great game for those of us who were actually there. Never mind the announced attendance of over 13,000; there were probably 8,000 fans in seats. Almost 80% of Section 101, the prime season ticket holder real estate behind the net, was empty. We personally experienced the parking garage last night, and it was somewhere between a visit to the dentist and renewing your license in person at the DMV in degree of difficulty. $12 to be forced to drive up three levels, with way too few stairwells to funnel a happy crowd back after the game? The time is definitely right for a new arena. I’ve had this conversation with Tom Lycan, author of the Star-Ledger’s Devils Due blog, and he captured my thoughts on the new arena pretty succinctly.

Whether you watched from behind the glass of the stands or the glass on your TV, what you saw last night was good puck movement down low, a great reduction in shots from the point that went into a mass of defensive bodies, and one “C”zech guy having a good time. It appears that nearly the whole team got the morning off for good behavior last night, as only Jay Pandolfo worked out seriously during the morning skate at South Mountain. Not a bad way to start the new hockey month.

Just turned the monthly page in my official Devils 06-07 calendar. The first half of November had my scraggly “W”s on game days, and everything from Thanksgiving break on looked downright L-bonian.

But it’s December. Holiday season. Snow, ice and cold weather. Dozens of new skaters at South Mountain Arena who will find a bit of Hans Christian Anderson under the tree, and eventually turn into our Mites, or more dangerously, synchronized skaters.

Tonight it’s Devils-Penguins in the muddy Meadowlands swamp. We’ll be there, cheering and eating and carrying on, looking forward to the next 60 games and not back at the last 4.