Devils 3, Islanders 2

Whew. And a big whew. So maybe WHEW. And so forth and so on.

On a night where the Devils needed to win to keep pace with the Penguins, they did so. The teams remain tied at 98 points, each snagging a playoff berth last night with their respective victories. This will be a dogfight until the end folks. For team morale and fan morale, it would make sense for the Devils to be the #2 seed. But, like I've said before, it might work in the Devils favor if they were to lose the Atlantic to the Pens and ended up #4 or #5. Granted, it wouldn't be great to face the hot Ottawa Senators, but do you really want to see a matchup against either the Atlanta Thrashers and Tampa Bay Lightning as the #7 team? I know I don't. Either way, I look forward to the playoffs, although I'm not optimistic.

No doubt it helped to have DiPietro on the shelf for tonight's game. I would much rather face Mike Dunham than America's Goalie, but that doesn't mean the Devils were handed the handicap and the win. They still had to earn it, which they did.

Zach Parise scored a career-high and a team-high 30th goal last night. And it was a power play goal on top of that. And it wasn't the only power play goal of the night for the Devils! David Clarkson, who has been far more impressive than I would have imagined, scored on the power play late in the game as well. Gomez had the other goal, and Elias got the assist on his Welcome Back! tour. Very nice. Goals for the Islanders were Yashin on the power play to make it 2-1 Devils and Jason Blake (of course) late in the game to make it 3-2, which was the final margin. Shots on goal were clearly in the Devils favor, as was the hustle factor.

It was nice to see the Devils play like this. Even the victory against the Panthers was shaky, this one was good. Good to see the Devils still have "it" whatever that may be. Also good to see Langenbrunner back in action and he got 20 minutes. Eric Rasmussen is back and got 16 minutes. Madden & Gionta are still out, but hopefully they will be coming back soon so we can put our complete team together. But the people, such as Clarkson, that don't really play much for the team are filling in admirably well.

Gotta keep up with the Pens, that's for sure. Or make them keep up with the Devils. Should be a good race. At least I'm excited about the Devils again, they looked GOOD.