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Matzah, Mishegas and Meadowlands

It was all there in one big package today: peanut butter and jelly on matzah sandwiches, hand-carried through security at the Meadowlands, to watch the Devils absolutely dismantle the Flyers. We were breaking so many game-going traditions I was a bit worried we might induce the evil eye: I wasn’t wearing my Gomez and Lagenbrunner-autographed jersey, as I just framed it; I wasn’t wearing my Czech hockey shirt, as I wore it when the Devils did a number on the Flyers earlier in the week; we weren’t eating chicken fingers and pretzels due to the Passover holiday.

Sometimes I think all of our little superstitions are there just to be sure we have something to fall on when things go badly. Today was not one of those days. Matter of fact, today was a day of complete and total mishegas — Yiddish for happy confusion — if you were keeping the Devils’ record books. Matzah and mishegas at the Meadowlands — sounds like something brought to you by Mickey Katz.

Some milestones set today:

  • Brian Gionta picked up goal #46, tying him with Pat Verbeek for the single-season Devils record.
  • Patrik Elias notched career point #500 on his first of two goals. With two goals and an assist, Patty has 43 points in just 37 games this season.
  • Devils won the season series with the Flyers, 5-3. Doesn’t really matter since if the Devils remained tied points-wise they’ll be ahead in the wins column, which is the first tie-breaker, but it’s nice to get the best of the cheesesteak gang this season.
  • I was a really loud fan. I invoked Tommy Salo (Swedish Olympic goalie who let his country down, as I inferred Robert Esche had done in Torino), Veronika Varekova (who might be more effective at center against John Madden than her husband, Petr Nedved), the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show (who has the best shot at getting Forsberg healthy), and my online Czech-English dictionary, which may have caused me to confuse “Thank you very much” with “Many times I have seen the spotted woodpecker”. Mishegas, indeed. And I apologize to the little kid sitting two rows in front of us who may have learned some new vocabulary words today.

    • So it comes down to Tuesday night. The Devils are in Montreal - Marty Brodeur’s home town - while the Rangers play the rather potent Ottawa Senators. A Rangers loss coupled with a Devils win puts the Devils atop the Atlantic Division. At this point, if the Devils win, it doesn’t matter what the Flyers do, but we’ve been saying that all season.

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    This entry was posted on Sunday, April 16th, 2006 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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