THERE is nothing about Scott Stevens’ personality or game that would remind anyone of a flower. And yet, like the tulip or daffodil, there is the captain, blooming every spring.

There were fewer than 15 seconds to go yesterday in the Devils’ 2-0 workmanlike Game 2 victory over the Hurricanes when winger Shane Willis looked down for a puck at his feet as he was about to cross the New Jersey line. Not a good idea, as Eric Lindros, Daymond Langkow, Kevyn Adams, Tomas Kaberle and Slava Kozlov all could have told the rookie; not a good idea at all.

Because an instant later, with the clock reading 11.7, Willis was laying prone on the Meadowlands ice, dazed and almost certainly concussed, laid out not by a tulip but by a cement truck wearing No. 4; laid out in the tournament just as all the aforementioned victims of Stevens had been laid out before.

Laid out by a perennial. Laid out on a signature hit that every prospective opponent around the league will have plenty of opportunity to see on all the highlights shows between now and the beginning of summer.

“I don’t know why anyone would have to see it to be aware of what Scott does and what he’s capable of doing,” said Larry Robinson, perhaps the only defenseman of the modern era to hit as consistently and effectively hard as the reigning Conn Smythe winner. “If I’m a player and I know Scott is on the ice, one thing I am not doing, no matter who I am, is come across the middle with my head down.

“What Scott does isn’t dirty; it’s hockey. It’s been part of his career forever. He’s a great body-checker. He’s a physical hockey player. He does what he does.”

What Stevens does is wait for the moment. What he doesn’t do is compare the devastation left in his wake. He’ll leave all of that to others.

“Obviously there are similarities between all those hits. I don’t want anybody to get hurt, but I can’t control that; I’m just playing hockey and playing to win,” the captain said when asked if he ever has flashbacks upon seeing victims curled up on the ice. “You can’t draw a plan or set it up; you just can see it develop.

“It has to be right. There are times when at the last second guys duck out; that happens. It’s a lot of timing and a bit of nerve.”

Willis, who earlier had missed the net on a third-period breakaway, was out on his feet after taking the thunderous blow that Stevens delivered, arms in tight, with his left upper chest after coming across with speed from his left defense position. The youngster wobbled, then crashed to the ice, sustaining a nasty laceration above the right eye and a likely concussion. He was kept overnight in a New Jersey hospital for observation.

“I saw him coming,” Stevens said. “That’s why I made the move.”

The Hurricanes don’t come close to having a single edge in this matchup that should end in the minimum number of games unless the Devils simply get lazy on Tuesday or Wednesday. Overrun by 5-1 in Thursday’s opener, Carolina pretty much stopped trying to win, and rather played to lose by as respectable a margin as possible in going into a passive trap midway through yesterday’s first period. Hardly sharp, uncharacteristically throwing passes around with all the accuracy of Danny Kanell on a bad day, the Devils won but hardly shined in doing so.

“Having the two days off and then starting the game at 3 o’clock might have had an effect,” said Stevens. “But we got the job done.”

The Devils got the job done, all right – Martin Brodeur has allowed five goals on 148 shots over 431:41 his last six Cup games, a GAA of 0.69 and a save percentage of .966 – and they got the job done with Stevens adding the thunder clap of an exclamation point with 15 seconds to go in a game that was all but over . . . but wasn’t over at all.

“I don’t give a [hoot] what time of the game it is, if there’s one second left; I can’t control when it happens,” Stevens, marching relentlessly at 37 toward a first-ballot Hall of Fame induction, said. “If there’s time on the clock, the game isn’t over. The game is never over; that’s the way I play.

“I’ve been a physical player my whole life, from minor hockey on up.”

With that, a man suggested that Stevens obviously hadn’t played in a no-checking league while he was of pre-teen, squirt age.

“No,” said The Perennial. “They must have changed that after I left.”