Back To Los Angeles: Devils Somehow Hold Off Kings, Force Game 6 With 2-1 Win

To show just how rare it is to even extend a series when it begins 3-0, consider these statistics:

So that is just twice a team trailing in the Finals 3-0 has even been able to get to a Game 6.

New Jersey Devils’ captain Zach Parise didn’t have a great start to this series, with no goals through three games, and the assembled press let him hear about it. Jersey head coach Peter DeBoer basically thanked the media for doing so after the Devils’ Game 5 victory, in which the free agent-to-be got a huge goal to start the scoring in the Devils’ 2-1 win.

In response to questions about Parise’s performance tonight, DeBoer playfully said after the game that “you guys [in the media] pissed him off, so keep talking.”

Ilya Kovalchuk only has an empty net goal in the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals, but he’s coming closer, and has probably looked his best in the series tonight. Jonathan Quick has been out of his mind for much of the playoffs, however, and robbed Kovalchuk with a great glove grab to keep it 2-1 New Jersey in Game 5.

The save came on a heck of a sequence of hockey, as Marek Zidlicky made a big hit on Mike Richards to stop a potential breakaway. On the ensuing rush, Kovalchuk took a great pass and got as good a head of speed as he has in a long time. But the shot was into the glove of Quick, who casually held for a whistle, and tossed it off.

The Kings have completely controlled the third period and it seems like they’ll tie this thing at any point. But somehow, the Devils are holding them off with help from a) Martin Brodeur and b) his goal posts.

Now, Dustin Brown’s committed a cardinal sin: A penalty taken 200 feet away from his own net. The Kings had control of the puck deep in behind Martin Brodeur, yet Brown took a silly, needless holding the stick penalty. Penalties kill momentum, even when the opposition has an awful power play unit. More importantly, time ticks off the clock for L.A.

The New Jersey Devils will have a full complement of defenders on the ice to try and hold their 2-1 lead in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, as Anton Volchenkov has returned. Volchenkov took a stick to the face from Mike Richards in the second period.

The Los Angeles Kings are losing after 40 minutes in their second consecutive chance to clinch their first Stanley Cup.

The Devils took the lead on a Bryce Salvador goal to make it 2-1 through two periods at the Prudential Center in Newark. This was after L.A. had tied the game on a terrific wrister from the slot by Justin Williams. All in all, New Jersey had a better period than the first, outshooting the Kings 12-9 in the middle frame. The teams are tied in shots at 16 overall.

If the Los Angeles Kings come back to win Game 5 — and thus also win a little thing called the Stanley Cup — we’ll be seeing a lot of this save over the next few months.

It looked as though Los Angeles had tied the score following a Devils penalty for delay of game, but well … you’re not allowed to do this, Jarret Stoll.

Great call by the officials to realize the stick was over the crossbar. In fact, all four officials seemed to make the call in unison. Rather impressive. Also impressive hand-eye from Stoll, but you don’t get points for that in this game.

The Devils had gone 0-for-15 on the power play in this 2012 Stanley Cup Finals and it had looked absolutely brutal at times. That all changed on a miscue by Kings goalie Jonathan Quick.

Quick made a miscalculation on his angle when trying to shoot the puck around. He sent it off the wrong part of the backboards, and right to Zach Parise. Parise jammed it and Quick was just a half-second late, and the Devils led 1-0. It was Parise’s first goal of the series.

The Kings trail 1-0 and it certainly looks like Martin Brodeur has brought his ‘A’ game here in Game 5, but a subtle — and illegal — little play by a Devils player may have prevented a Justin Williams goal.

On a shift which featured some sustained pressure in the New Jersey end of the ice, Justin Williams lost his stick in the high slot. As he chased after it, a Devils player pushed it over into the corner. Williams went to chase after his stick, and as play continued, the puck trickled just by the post on Brodeur’s glove side.

The Devils power play was looking as inept as it had in the first four games of this series until Jonathan Quick gave them a gift.

Quick went out to play a soft dump-in from New Jersey and messed up the angle, sending it right onto the stick of Zach Parise, who jammed it home on the wraparound to make it 1-0 New Jersey at 12:45.

Patrik Elias seems fine after taking a big hit from Matt Greene, but a 2-on-1 rush almost turned out ugly for the Devils. Elias dished the puck off in front of the net on the rush, and a solid second or two after he let go of the puck Green buried him with a late hit. Elias lost his balanced and tumbled into the boards. He was slow to get up.

No penalty was called on the play and the Prudential Center crowd certainly didn’t seem happy about that. Then again, Elias didn’t seem to miss a shift.

Whoops.

Maybe the Devils and Kings heard the entire hockey world complaining about how boring this series has been so far. It’s been a bit dull offensively thus far in the first four games, but in the first three or so minutes of Game 5?

Yep, they got the memo. Several hits, more scoring chances than we saw in the entire second period in Game 4, at least by my count. Justin Williams hit a post. Ryan Carter found himself with the puck all alone next to Jonathan Quick.

The Devils and Kings, naturally, put their two best lines out against each other to start Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals, and both got exciting rushes out of them.

For the Kings, Dustin Brown made a power move to the net on the Devils D, but couldn’t get a shot away as he didn’t have the handle he wanted. Meanwhile, at the other end, Ilya Kovalchuk was nearly sprung for a breakaway by Marek Zidlicky, but the pass went through his legs.

Los Angeles Kings coach Daryl Sutter believes his team played better in their Game 4 loss to the New Jersey Devils than they did in their Game 2 overtime victory.

This doesn’t worry him, however, because the Kings’ bench boss believes his team is stoic. “I haven’t seen a big change in our team emotionally for almost two months now,” he said, “I think we’ve been able to handle different situations. I think they’ve learned, because of the breaks we had before Series 2 and before Series 3, the breaks they had, they had to learn to get their space, get back to being focused and reloaded.”

During his afternoon press conference with the media on the Friday before Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Newark, the first-year Devils bench boss responded to a question about his team’s focus levels, sarcastically saying, “You saw my 100 percent focus on the game. That’s discipline.” Even the occasionally- jaded hockey media let out a laugh that I don’t think I’ve heard some stand-up comics get.

In probably the oddest follow-up question ever, DeBoer was asked what his wife thought. He simply responded, “Yeah, she saw the focus.”

New Jersey forced a Game 5 in this series with a 3-1 victory in Los Angeles on Wednesday night.