Hospitable hosts all season, the Devils are planning a welcome back party tomorrow. They hope Jaromir Jagr gets a bang out of it.
They expect the two-time NHL scoring champ to return to this series for Game 5 at the Meadowlands, after he missed three games with a groin injury. Despite going 1-2 against the Penguins in Jagr’s absence, they wouldn’t mind ushering him out of the series again.
“Absolutely, if the opportunity is there, we have to take the body on Jagr,” Ken Daneyko said. “I expect him to play, no doubt.”
Unlike some other Penguins, notably Matthew Barnaby, teams have trouble working up playoff hatred for Jagr, who plays a classy, graceful game. The Devils will be trying to stoke up those engines.
“In the playoffs, you have to block everything out. He’s a great player, and great for the game, but we have to have the will to win. You have to have some dislike to stop him,” Daneyko said.
In truth, the Penguins may have already blown their chance to upset the Devils by not playing Jagr in Game 4, when they had the chance to take a hammerlock 3-1 lead in this series. Instead, it’s 2-2, the Devils have regained their confidence and found some scoring, and Jagr may not be enough to tilt the balance back the other way.
But the Devils are correctly worried, ignoring the coincidence that they won the only game Jagr played.
“When the greatest player in the world is coming back, it’s tough to contend with,” Daneyko said. “He’s a great player, no ifs, ands or buts.”
Jagr’s return means a reunion of Scott&Scott, the Stevens-Niedermayer defense pair that Robbie Ftorek used against him in Game One. When Jagr went out, Ftorek redid his backlines, although belatedly.
For the first time since the 1994 semis against the Rangers, the Devils have squared a series they trailed 2-1. But they lost that epochal matchup in games that only increased in grandeur as the series progressed.
The prelude is completed for this one. The star character is returning to the stage. The main drama begins tomorrow. *NHL is reviewing Barnaby’s inanity from the Game 4 warmups, when he bumped several Devils, shot a puck at one, and tried to start a brawl … Last summer’s first rounder, Scott Gomez, joined the team after his junior squad was eliminated from its playoffs. He doesn’t expect to see action … In yesterday’s optional skate, Sheldon Souray, Lyle Odelein, Vadim Sharifijanov, Krzysztof Oliwa, Patrik Elias, Denis Pederson, Sergei Brylin, Jason Arnott, Sergei Nemchinov, Brendan Morrison and Dave Andreychuk practiced.
Devils split opening pair at home, where they went 19-14-8 during the regular season, the first time since 1988-89 they won fewer than 20 home games in a full season.
