NJ 4 - WSH 1

The score says a lot for someone who didn't watch the game. The replays - just click the camera - showed a lopsided victory, but I'm not positive yet. Looking at the stats, it looks like Marty had a lot of work last night with 36 shots against. Hopefully a lot of these were pepper shots from the outside with some stellar second and third chance saves.

The special teams looked ideal last night (2 for 4 on the PP and 4 for 4 on the PK) as the Devs took a lot less penalties than we've seen recently, leading me to think that the defense wasn't one-step behind like they've been recently. Props to everyone. There's not much to complain about here, which is a great feeling for the solid effort. General feelings have been the same at Tom Lycan's Devil's Due blog and 2 Man Advantage, so I'll have to take their word for it.

As Rich Chere notes, the best news is that Ovechkin's eight game point streak was shut down not by Pando, but by Brylin. Colin Stephenson writes that the fact that AO is a left wing meant that either Pando would have to switch to right or someone else would have to pick him up. Looking back at the 3-2 loss against the Rangers and how easily things got out of hand when Pando wasn't shadowing Jagr as well as any time when Madden and Pando get switched up on the PK, playing the perfect positional game against one of the top skaters in the league is a daunting task at least. The fact that Brylin and the defense were able to hold him to 5 shots (below his average) in a 36 shot game says a lot for how valuable Brylin is.

Of course, most valuable has to be Marty, who has won all 19 games for the Devils this season and most of the time, has done it with a handful of jaw-dropping saves. He's 2nd in the league in wins (19), 6th in GAA (2.15), 1st in saves (822), and 5th in save percentage (.923). All of this with a less than stellar defensive core. I'm not implying that the defense isn't good, but it can't hold a candle to the Stevens-Niedermayer-Daneyko core that Marty had eariler. Every critic has mentioned the Devils' defense as the reason why Marty's won so many games and has so many records, but these last two seasons should prove them wrong. Currently the Devils are ranked 9th in Wins, but somehow Marty has more than everyone but Giguere (understandable since the Ducks are so good this year). Marty has never led the league in shots against nor saves, though he came close last year; this year, he's on pace to set or even break his career high all while maintaining a .923 save percentage. To put it into perspective, he's only once managed better than .917 and that was in 96-97 when Hasek beat him for the Vezina and he only played 67 games. His career playoff save percentage is .921. All of this with an offense that has only 90 goals in 34 games (2.64 goals per game) in the NEW NHL. Check out his profile and highlights here. If he keeps up these numbers, breaks 43 wins, and the Devils win the Atlantic Division, Marty deserves a Vezina and maybe even the Hart.

Granted I am biased, but when the Devils' defense has 2 players coming into their own (Martin and Hale), 1 player who's finally turning a corner (Lukowich), 2 players who've been thrown into the go-to-guy position (White and Rafalski), and 1 player who hasn't played North American hockey before (Oduya) and they're offense is not producing as much as they did last year, the games are won and lost on Marty's shoulders (similar to Hasek in Buffalo). As far as I've seen, nobody's done the same for their team yet.