The Kids Are More Than All Right vs. Devils

Isles 3 : Devils 1

The Devils, although vying for the top spot in the Eastern Conference, have not found much success against their division and city rivals, the Rangers and the Islanders. The Isles, having fallen on hard times as of late, were coming into Newark off of a hapless 3-1 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, one that upset coach Ted Nolan greatly. He responded with a brutal practice the following day- and it woke the team up. Big time.

The Islanders responded with a pointed 3-1 win over their rivals at the Prudential Center. With Wade Dubielewicz starting the last few games of this season in Rick DiPietro's stead, they came out strong, and the younger players that have made up the majority of the roster came up big after working hard and earning their ice time.

First was Blake Comeau, on a great play in the first period that took his defenseman wide and handed off to Kyle Okposo, the touted rookie playing his first road game. Okposo got it back to Comeau, who buried it with Richard Park screening in front, for his seventh of the year. (Fun Fact: All seven of Comeau's goals have been on the road.) That slowed the Devils' obvious momentum, as they were faster, but the Islanders were overall playing smarter.

Then came the power play, and there were many of them in this game overall- the second period alone was a parade to the sin bin, with 5-on-4, 4-on-4, 4-on-3 and (for a brief moment) even some pond hockey, 3-on-3 action on the ice, The Devils scored what would be their only goal on the PP, as Travis Zajac (who had drawn the penalty) picked up a messy rebound and slipped it just past the pads of Dubielewicz to tie it a 1. After that, the Devils ran off with the puck, slamming 34 shots at Dubielewicz to the Isles' 16. However, Dubie would stand up tall in this game, as would the offense late in the game.

Luck was a huge factor in the second, as the Isles committed penalty after penalty, and were briefly down 2-1 on a Sergei Brylin stuff-in- but thankfully, the net had come off of its moorings as the puck went in, and the goal was disallowed. That didn't stop the flirtation with the penalty box- and the penalty kill, and Dubie, were stellar.

Also, there was some feistiness in this one, mainly due to frustration- Bill Guerin got into it with New Jersey's David Clarkson in the second period to wake his teammates up and get them going. The third period saw three more fights, involving Arron Asham, Matthew Spiller, Josef Vasicek, David Pelley, Rob Davison and another Devil, that fortunately had no effect on the outcome.

What did?

A young man by the name of Kyle Okposo, who'd already tallied his first NHL point, an assist on Comeau's goal. However, he wasn't satisfied- he scored his own, the game-winner on the power play to put the Isles up 2-1 at 17:25 of the third. Dubielewicz would stonewall the Devils, and Trent Hunter added an empty-netter to make it official- finally, the Isles had reason to smile, and smile big, because of the triumph of their hopeful future star. With that, the Isles aren't playing for much other than pride, but the message that Nolan sent to his players had sunk in- don't give up.