Sure a loss is a loss — but hey, last night wasn’t that bad. The boys exuded a strong effort in Mo-town and aside from a few unlucky bounces, gave Detroit a bit of a scare. I’d be lying to you if I said I expected much better than what I saw last night.

It’s also a sigh of relief that both Salvador & Gionta are doing fine after they left with injuries last night. Although you never know, both of them could be in a coma at the moment. I guess you never do know until game time.

Speaking of game time, it’s almost that time again. Nothing like a weekend turnaround!

The biggest question going into tonight lies between the pipes for New Jersey. Brent Sutter spoke to the tune that he hasn’t made up his mind as to whether Kevin Weekes or Scott Clemmensen will get the nod for the Devils tonight.

If I may issue a humble statement… Kevin Weekes should — absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, play tonight. (Which probably means he won’t.)

If Weekes is going to be our go-to guy for the remainder of Brodeur’s absence, you have to trust him with the grinds of a season, especially on these back-to-back showdowns. I don’t care if both games are against Western Conference opposition. The man needs to play, sweat off the rust, and feel like he really is the #1 guy — interim or not. If you sit him tonight, you deny him an opportunity at a bounce-back game after a tough loss and send him in cold against the Rangers on Wednesday. Wonderful confidence booster, no?

I could go on for hours and hours about this but the point remains the same. Weekes is our number-one now, and he needs to be treated as such. It’s too early to sit the guy, especially when your other option is Scott Clemmensen. (Sorry, Patricia.)

With that being said, the boys in front of him need to execute the same game plan they did last night — lots of pucks to the net and be a little more responsible defensively.

Oh, and Patrik — seriously? I mean… really?! You owe us tonight.

==============

COME SAY HI! Josh and I will be in attendance tonight — section 120 (Josh) and I’ll be in section 119 Row 6. Oh, and Scott, too. But you can hang out on the concourse and pass him Gatorade cups as he goes whizzing by you.

Shouldn’t be hard to find us, we’ll probably be the only ones there.

UPDATE: Can we just give a little shout out to the Newark Star Ledger for quoting us on its website today? Thanks guys, I’m glad our dramatics could be appreciated!

Okay, so let’s all take a breath here.

Yes, it is me, the one and only — coming out of hiding and making an appearance on my lovechild produced with absolutely no involvement of sexy-time activities.

Haven’t you heard, blogs are totally like that nowadays. It’s the Virgin 2MA!

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

We have a mess on our hands ladies and gents. Martin Brodeur, as you may recall — he’s that guy that usually plays in net for the Devils — well, he hurt his ‘bow.

(oh snap!)

He dun’ hurt it good, too. The record chaser is out for up to four months. Yes. Four months.

That sound you just heard? That would be the cries of Devils fans everywhere as they step one inch closer to the edge of the ledge, threatening to drop like delicate little flies into oblivion.

Oh, how poetic.

Hey, this is a fantastic time at 2MA. Not that we’re into capitalizing on Mr. Brodeur’s injury in any shape or form, but this totally gives us a chance to break out our arsenal of Kevin Weekes pictures.

Silver lining, how I love thee.

Let’s get fo’ realz for a minute though. Yes, this is a huge blow to an already decimated Devils lineup, but let’s get off that ledge for a minute and give this team a chance. Marty may be out for pretty much the majority of the season at this point, but Weekesie is a capable netminder, right?

RIGHT?! So maybe I need a teeny bit of reassurance myself.

Whatevs. This boys will make do. Can’t win ‘em all. Every dog has its day. Et cetera, et cetera.

It’ll be okay.

…ah, who are we kidding. WE’RE SCREWED.

Excuse me, I need to run off and take my Prozac now. Things might get a little dicey otherwise.

So, there is a silver lining in the Marty injury saga. It’s a very very small silver lining, barely registering on whatever one uses to measure silver linings. But it’s there, and I’ve found it. The very very small silver lining to Marty’s injury is thus:

We can use the Weekeser Beam picture again!

Okay, so in all seriousness now, it’s still rather unclear what Brodeur’s injury is, but the Devils said “elbow bruise” when it happened. And in Devils speak, “elbow bruise” probably means his arm fell off. Or possibly a pulled hamstring. I’m out of practice with my Devils injury speak.

Either way, it’s becoming (PAINFULLY) clear that Marty’s chase of Patrick Roy’s wins record is probably on hold for at least a few games. Kevin Weekes definitely has the nod in between the pipes this evening at the Rock against the Sabres, and my guess would be we’ll be seeing him on Wednesday as well. I have little fear with Weekes in net, the man was a starter for many years and is nearing his own milestone - two wins gives him 100 on his NHL career.

Backing up Weekes will be former 2MA icon Scott Clemmenson, who was recently recalled from Lowell for the assignment. The Devils also recalled rookie defenseman Anssi Salmela, for reasons unknown. I don’t think it’s to play goal, though. Edit: According to Gulitti, Paul Martin’s not on the ice for practice today. Crap.

Tonight’s Buffalo/New Jersey matchup provides one other interesting storyline that I never would have expected out of this game before the season started: The NHL’s top two goal scorers will be in the house. Thomas Vanek leads all scorers with 11 goals in as many games, while Zach Parise comes in at second with nine goals in ten games. Who woulda thunk it, a Devil amongst the league leaders in goal scoring? If Parise pots a puck (yay alliteration) tonight, he’ll also set a Devils record for most consecutive games scoring a goal - he sits tied with Valeri Zelepukin, Bobby Holik, Kirk Muller, and Pat Verbeek for the club record with six consecutive goal-scoring games.

I won’t be watching this evening’s game (lousy classes need to stop occuring on game nights), but I’m sure you can expect a typical Scott Mackie rant afterwards! And for those fearing that we’ve forgotten about LiveCaps - fret not, they’re coming. It’s been a rough go of things schedule-wise for most of the crew here, but after this week, things should be relatively back to normal. Thanks for sticking with us!

Well we have lots of stuff to get to here… let’s split this up:

the Good:
– we pounded on a shitty team… long and hard… and all over again… never have I been so exhausted from yelling… HEY… YOU SUCK like I did all second period!!
– Zach Parise… maybe stepping up from good… to elite level??
– defense was decent today (ok it’s only stopping #17, and Brookbank did bite the big one on the one goal…but when you’re up 6.. it’s ok! And he whipped some ass in a fight like 3 minutes later!)
– WE SCORED ON THE POWER PLAY… and they didn’t!!!!
– Kevin Weekes played stellar considering the situation and circumstances….
– Patrik Elias… welcome back to the score sheet (yes there is room for you on there too lil G!)
– Section 209… oh my God… between the bitch fight with drunk Kelly and the other madness tonight… (http://www.youtube.com/crashliner to see the beer bottle plink-o videos!), damn that was fun tonight!
– Zubrus was AWESOME tonight.. and it’s a disgrace people look at the stat sheet for the 3 stars of the game!

the Bad:
– AGAIN.. in a BLOWOUT game… 8:04 for Bergfors…. 8:10 for Vrana… PLAY THE GODDAMN KIDS MORE… even more so when your key players are OUT… it’s a BLOWOUT game… and you just saw Brodeur go down…there is NO NEED to shorten the bench up 6-0!!!!!!!!!
– as if Marty’s injury wasn’t bad enough… it was a TOTAL DISGRACE that our FRANCHISE PLAYER is being helped off the ice (and BTW.. going on his body language it’s a KNEE not an elbow people)…. THEY HAD THE IDIOT T-SHIRT GUY RUNNING AROUND AND TAKING T-SHIRTS OFF HIS FAT BODY AND THROWING THEM TO THE CROWD… and then to make it worse… IF YOU WERE A FAN JUMPING UP AND DOWN FOR A T-SHIRT… LEAVE THE BUILDING NOW… NEVER COME BACK… you are a flat out DISGRACE of a sports fan, FORGET HOCKEY and you never belong at a sporting event AGAIN… period!! (I am serious about this… this is a total disgrace on the team and the fans behalf… yes I bash him and want to play less because I KNOW we need him at his BEST in April, May and JUNE) and I’m going mild on this because they want me to keep my swearing down here… I hate you all who jumped up and I was screaming this at the game… HEY ASSHOLES YOUR FRANCHISE IS LIMPING OFF THE ICE AND YOU’RE PANDERING FOR A T-SHIRT!!! UNACCEPTABLE!!!!

Really not much else to say… good luck Weekes on Monday!!!

It’s been a pretty stellar pre-season for the Devils thus far, despite a 3-2 loss to the Washington Capitals last night at Prudential Center.

The Red ‘n Black roster, consisting mostly of Lowell regulars and a few main-stays, handled the competition pretty well. Considering that competition consisted of guys like Alex Ovechkin, Niklas Backstrom, and Michael Nylander — I’m alright with the loss.

Washington was able to grab a 3-0 lead in the third period, but the Devs were resilient, adding two late tallies thanks to Zach Parise and a Petr Vrana deflection. Kevin Weekes went the distance for New Jersey.

The next tour of duty for the Devils will find them in the Nassau Mausoleum tomorrow night for a 7:00pm faceoff. The contest will be the only home pre-season matchup for the New York Islanders. I’ll be in attendance, Section 325 / Row A for those 2ManAdvantage fans on Long Island

Martin Brodeur is expected to play the full contest tomorrow night.

Pre-season action begins tonight! Wee!

That’s right ladies and gents, our boys will be suiting up for their preseason opener tonight in Philadelphia, which means we are one gigantic step closer to beginning the season in earnest.

Word on the street is that the Flyers will be streaming the game tonight on their website, which may be the only way any of us will be privy to this contest. If you can’t stomach listening to a pair of radio hosts gush about how fantastic (terrible) an idea it was to sign Mike

Richards for the next three centuries, Tom Gulitti says he’ll be giving period by period updates over on Fire and Ice, so check that out.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite Devils’ beat writer, Gulutti reports that none other than Kevin Weekes will be in net this evening! This of course means three things:

1. We totally have an excuse to use the Weekes laser beam photo.
2. Weekes has completely recovered from the torn bicep muscle he sustained lifting books of crossword puzzles every night on the bench last year.
3. This will be the last time this season the poor dude will see any playing time before March.

In other news, Gulitti also reported this afternoon that one of the line combos will be a trio of youngsters, with Petr Vrana centering a line with Fedor Fedorov and Nicklas Bergfors. Also expected to get substantial time (including some PP action) are Tyler Eckford and Matt Corrente.

Gulitti reports that Mr. Sutter will also try out Brian Rolston on the point during the powerplay (as he should) and Bobby Holik on the top powerplay unit (WHAT…THE…F%*&). No word on if my personal favorite Matt Halischuk will be playing, but i’ve heard he’s been turning heads at camp so I certainly hope so.

At any rate, we’re a mere two and a half weeks from dropping the puck for the start of the season and I can speak for all the 2ma staff when I say it’s about effin’ time. Keep it here for updates as we hurtle towards another New Jersey Devils season.