The view from Newark

Are the New Jersey Devils comforted or concerned? To be certain, being down 2-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals is not a situation any team would ask for, but the Devils have now played six periods of regulation hockey in the Finals and have an aggregate score of 2-2. They’re in a hole because overtime has proved to be a cruel mistress. For large portions of the first two games, the Devils have used their forecheck and neutral-zone pressure to make things difficult for the Kings, and goalie Martin Brodeur has been special. The Devils, though, haven’t been able to finish their chances, and give a nod to Jonathan Quick for that, as well. The Devils can’t blame the fates though. The saying goes, “You make your own luck,’’ and right now the Devils aren’t making enough. They were good in New Jersey. They will need to be even better in Los Angeles in order to try to turn things around. Here’s how The Star-Ledger and The Record covered last night’s game, followed by some additional postgame quotes from the Devils…

The Star-Ledger’s Devils coverage

The Record’s Devils coverage

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COACH PETER DEBOER

(on losing despite playing well…) “Yeah, it’s tough. But, you know, you can’t feel sorry for yourself. We played a much better game. I knew we would respond. We did in the right way. You know, came up one goal short.”

(on what happened on Jeff Carter’s goal…) “You know what, I don’t know. We had five guys collapsed around the net. They found a way to get a puck through.”

(on putting Parise, Kovalchuk and Zajac together on a line…) 11We decided the end of two periods to shuffle some lines. It wasn’t necessarily to put those three together. That was part of it. But we mixed up and got Elias, Zubrus and Henrique together. I like how they played. It was just a shot in the arm to try to find a goal. We haven’t scored enough, obviously.”

(on the good play from the Devils’ fourth line…) “Yeah, they scored the goal for us in the third. They did their part. They have the entire playoff. We just have to keep getting efforts like that from them.”

(on getting more shot blocks and deflections in Game 2…) “That’s something we’ve been trying to do the entire playoff. We just played a much better game tonight. We spent more time in their end of the ice, got more shots through to the net, got more points shot. It wasn’t an adjustment. That’s our game. We just executed better tonight than we did Game 1.”

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ZACH PARISE

(on whether the third-period line changes helped the Devils…) “I think. I don’t know. We ended up getting a goal and getting some good opportunities. I guess it didn’t hurt.”

(on what he saw from the Devils’ power play…) “I don’t remember. I think the puck movement wasn’t great. I can only remember the one in the second period. The puck movement wasn’t great. I mean, they do a great job of pressuring, and they jump you at the right times if you don’t make flat, tape-to-tape passes. So we’ve just got to bear down a little bit.”

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ILYA KOVALCHUK

(on what happened in Game 2…) “You can find all kinds of excuses, but we just have to prepare ourselves for Game 3. We know that it will be do-or-die for us. … We can’t lose three in a row. It’s unbelievable. We work hard. We create chances, but we couldn’t capitalize.”

(on whether he hit the post late in the third period…) “Yeah, I think crossbar. What are you going to do? I thought we worked really hard. We were forechecking better than we were in the first game, and we just have to keep working. It’s not done yet.”

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MARTIN BRODEUR

(on Jeff Carter’s goal…) “Well, Carter made a great play early on, across to Dustin Penner there, and I made a save. His momentum took him behind the net. He grabbed the puck and kind of rolled over all my players. A big forward, he just kind of took his ice and used everybody as a screen to shoot a puck short-side.”

(on the Devils’ strong play in Game 2…) “I think what we changed, during our couple days off, paid dividends, to a certain extent. We didn’t come out with a win, but I thought we were able to dictate more (of) the play. We’ve just got to keep doing that. They’re a team that, they’re tough to play against. They’re big boys and defensively, they’re pretty tight. When they do make a mistake, Quick has been playing well. We’ve just got to keep going. I thought today was a lot better game for us, but same result, so we’ve got to find just the result changing.