PHILADELPHIA – Coming back from 3-1 the way the Devils will have to come back against the Flyers is about execution, discipline and focus, it’s about all of that. But more than anything else, coming back from 3-1 is about having the guts to do it.
It’s about having the guts to play with defiance, about having the stomach to confront adversity with a sneer, about having the courage to stop the enemy from taking away something dear. It’s about vowing to continue the fight no matter the cost. It’s about having the soul to achieve something great when, to all the world it appears out of reach.
It’s easy to lose, easier still when it’s 3-1 against, when Game 5 is on the road, when some measure of success has already been attained simply by having advanced to the conference finals. It’s easy to lose in a situation where nobody expects anything different. It’s easy to go home for the summer.
It’s been too easy for the Flyers to win three straight games in the Easterns that continue here tonight, even given their 105-point, regular-season conference title. It’s been too easy because the Devils haven’t matched their opponents’ determination and hunger, let alone their level of consistent execution. It’s been too easy because there are Devils who have taken shifts off, who have backed away from the challenge.
And Larry Robinson knows it.
“You have character guys like Scott Stevens and Ken Daneyko who give everything they’ve got every game, but we can get quite a bit better effort from a lot of other guys,” Robinson said at the Meadowlands yesterday before the bus ride down the Turnpike. “It’s always been past my comprehension why athletes, given what they’re given in today’s market, cannot sacrifice and give everything they’ve got in key situations.
“If you consider yourself a winner, you shouldn’t leave anything on the table. This is what you’re being paid to do, and it’s what you love to do. I can’t fathom anybody not giving everything they have.”
This Devils era began in 1993-94 when Jacques Lemaire and Robinson first came to New Jersey, when Martin Brodeur came to New Jersey. There’s been both the most ultimate success and the most extreme failure over the last seven seasons; dramatic victories and heartbreaking losses. There’s been just about everything.
But over the last seven seasons – six in the playoffs – there’s one thing the Devils have never done. They have never come back to win a series in which they have faced elimination prior to Game 7. They have never come back from 3-1, they have never come back from 3-2.
“I’ve never been one to compare one situation to another because from year to year everything changes,” Stevens, who was captain of the Blues in 1991 when they came back from 3-1 against Red Wings, said. “The one thing about this situation is that there’s going to be a huge amount of pressure on us, and maybe we need that at this point.
“Maybe we need that pressure to bring the very best out of us, because up until now we’ve been far from our best in this series, and that’s very difficult to accept. Maybe this is exactly what we need.”
The Devils need a hero here, that’s what they need down 3-1 to the Flyers. They need Brodeur to be better in the playoffs than he’s been since 1995, not to mention much, much better than he’s been in the last three games. They need their goaltender to lift them over a hurdle far bigger than Keith Primeau, and then they need the pack to follow.
“It’s a team commitment, but maybe we do need one guy to go out there and do something that makes everyone else go, ‘Wow,'” Brodeur said. “We need it to start with one guy and then have the other 19 pick up from that and go with it.”
Twelve teams in the last 12 years have come back from 3-1 down to win in seven, but every one of them did it in the first round, when the caliber of opposition is at its weakest. Sixteen teams in NHL history have come back from either 3-1 or 3-0 to win in seven, but every one of them has done it in what was either the first or second round of the playoff format. Thus, no team has ever won a third (or fourth) round coming from the hole in which the Devils have jumped (or been pushed) into. No team in history.
“Then we can make history,” Robinson said. “That’s the challenge. It’s a great challenge. You need a challenge.”
The Devils need a commitment to get the puck to the net. They need more from the first line of Jason Arnott, Petr Sykora and Patrik Elias; more from Alexander Mogilny and Scott Gomez. They need more from Randy McKay, more from Vladimir Malakhov; more from Brodeur and Scott Niedermayer, the young Gold Dust twins of 1995.
The Devils need a hero, and they need the courage to go out and get the job done, not only once but twice, not only twice but three times.
The Devils need to find the guts to do it, that’s what the Devils need, the guts to do something so difficult that it has never been done before.
The Devils need the guts to make history.
