If I had given you only the fun, almost unbelievable fact above as a description of how the Devils' regular season went it would be like telling you that Saving Private Ryan was merely about a successful trip to the beaches of Normandy. In a way, it's a credit to how incredibly resilient they have been when it's mattered the most, but making it sound like there was merely a couple speed bumps on an otherwise clear path to the playoffs does a laughable disservice to the highs and lows of what is comparable to only pregnancy as an emotionally exhaustive adventure.
The players, as they are known to do, said all the right things in battling inexperience, inconsistency, injuries, incompetent officiating, and the plucking of asshole hairs that is the reviewing of offsides and/or the challenging of goaltender interference. However, the expressions on their faces last night told a much more exasperating tale of what's transpired between October and April. And why wouldn't they? In coming back from a one goal deficit that was the result of a bad bounce after a mind-blowingly piss poor call, last night was a nice little microcosm of a season that has had the most pessimistic and the most optimistic of fans running into each other en route to the next overreaction. The sense of long overdue elation in the Prudential Center air was as ever present as the sense of relief, and that's because every damn person in the building was taking their first deep breathe of 2018. In every sense of the word, a young Devils team - that just as easily could as easily counted "almost" as a moral victory - refused to give in to early expectations and earned the right to play in the postseason. There was no margin left for error. No backdoor left unlocked. Hell, if anything, that proverbial backdoor was getting beaten down, and while it was? New Jersey simply took to task a murderer's row of opponents in front of them because a failure to do so would have cost them their playoff lives. There were times when it was far from pretty, but almost as often it was poetic the way in which a team that continually had the bar raised remained unrelenting in reaching it. 97 goddamn points, and only after game 81 were they able to bust into the room to breathe. I'm happy for John Hynes. I think he's remained rigorous in keeping his finger on the pulse of a team that's heavily reliant on rookies and once spare parts, and that wouldn't have gotten anywhere near enough attention if they flatlined. I'm ecstatic for Taylor Hall. I legitimately would have put together a GoFundMe to rent the Hart of the team a padded room during the offseason if, despite keeping the team afloat with his seemingly endless excellence, he still failed to shoot his shot with his white whale. I'm appreciative of Keith Kinkaid, for tomorrow's game would be nothing but a fatality of a formality if it weren't for his overnight growth into a whole new player. I'm proud of the rest of a team that trusted itself, even when no one else would, and pissed on every antiquated, overdone narrative about a franchise that's having as much fun as ever before. If absolutely nothing goes right from here on out, a promising group of pesky and improving players has a feather to put in their cap. With their confidence at an all time high, I doubt they are resting on their laurels, but there is nothing left for them to prove to a fan base that collectively looked as though it had just lost its virginity when the clock hit zero last night. The Devils have nothing to lose and I expect them to play like it going forward, but they've already won over everyone whose bated breaths have been given a few days to normalize as their acceptance of what's less than a year removed from being an unreal reality sets in.
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