Martin Brodeur is my constant

There aren’t very many constants in life these days, but at least – until recently – there has always been Martin Brodeur.

For much of the past two decades, Martin Brodeur has been one of the league’s top netminders, calling New Jersey his home and himself a Devil for life. He’s set records, won trophies, earned championships and more, but what’s most important to the man’s legacy has been his superhuman ability to remain, with consistency, amongst the NHL’s elite.

If Gary Bettman decided to expand his league into questionable markets in the southern United States, Martin Brodeur, the perennial All-Star, was there. If he opted to introduce shootouts as a way of winning meaningful games, Martin Brodeur, the perennial All-Star, was there.

As technology evolved to all but eliminate society’s need for print literature, and as the ozone tore and the ice caps melted, Martin Brodeur, the perennial All-Star, was there. He was always there.

Of course if the sun imploded rendering civilization lightless in a cold, doomed world, Martin Brodeur would turn away 29 shots in a New Jersey Devils shutout win, take off his helmet and announce to the crowd “I got this”.

At least that’s the way it used to be up until the 2010-11 season.

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It’s mid-January and the New Jersey Devils are the worst team in the entire NHL. Their 10-29-2 record has left them laughing stocks in a league over which they once reigned.

The 41-game mark has come and gone, not so much a date to be circled on the calendar as a mental milestone signaling the end of one half and the beginning of another.

Just last season the Devils finished the year as the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed with 103 points. This year a 41-0-0 second half would give them 106 points.

Yes, unfortunately, things in New Jersey are officially that bad.

Last Saturday the Devils were on the road against the Philadelphia Flyers. Not only did the game mark a reunion between two teams in the first round of the 2010 playoffs, it marked a glimmer of hope that remained – and still does – for the franchise.

As the puck drops at the Wells Fargo Center in the 41st game of the franchise’s 29th season in the NHL, Martin Brodeur is sitting on the bench. He isn’t hurt – not physically at least – yet career reserve Johan Hedberg was granted the start for the third consecutive game.

Though Hedberg is a respectable goalie, having played for five teams in an 11-year career, an All-Star he is not. His presence between the pipes is both awkward and unusual to everyone in the building. It’s not, however, unjustified.

Over the course of Brodeur’s last 11 games, the 38-year-old future Hall of Famer has lost 10 of them, surrendering 34 goals in the process. The one victory he took away from the embarrassing skid was a 29-save shutout win against the Phoenix Coyotes. Call it a fluke if you want, an outlier, or call it the shell of Brodeur’s former-self gasping for breath.

Brodeur had lost six consecutive games when he was bumped to the bench in a team-wide attempt to shake things up. Head coach John MacLean was fired, team captain Jamie Langenbrunner was traded to the Dallas Stars and Martin Brodeur, the perennial All-Star, had been officially designated a goaltending reserve.

In Hedberg’s first two starts as a primary goalie, he allowed six goals in back-to-back losses. In this third consecutive start, he was hoping to get back on track.

By the end of the first period, it became evident that this particular Saturday wouldn’t be the day poor Hedberg convinced the Devils that Brodeur’s services were no longer necessary. After allowing two goals in his first 10 shots, his night was done.

As the scoresheet would eventually read, less than 15 minutes had passed when Hedberg got the hook, Brodeur got the nod, and New Jersey fans watching the game from home got the impression that recently-hired replacement coach Jacques Lemaire was saying to himself “Oh, what the hell”.

But the quick decision may have turned New Jersey’s dismal season around, in one way at least.

Brodeur went out in that 41st game, stopping all the shots he faced as the first half of the season wound to a close. The goalless performance may not have helped his team to a win, but when momentum’s as hard to come by as it has been for the Devils, they’ll settle for what they can get.

Hope flickered in the goaltender and in the Devils that day, despite the fact that they still stood eight points behind the second-worst team in the NHL, the lowly New York Islanders.

***

As a rule, Martin Brodeur is a dominant goalie, so when he struggled so horribly in his first 26 starts, the world took notice. Though hidden somewhat in the shadows of $100 million free agent Ilya Kovalchuk’s own blunders, Brodeur’s inability to live up to his past production is hard to overlook.

With an uncharacteristic .887 save percentage so far this season and a GAA of 3.05, the 38-year-old goaltender is on pace to set new career lows in both categories (save for a two-game stint he played in 1991-92, over a year before his official 1993-94 rookie campaign).

For comparison’s sake, in a 16-year span from 1995 until 2010, Brodeur’s save percentage dipped below .910 a mere four times, a figure made more depressing when you consider the fact that his most recent GAA is 37 percent higher than his career average of 2.23.

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the man’s career has taken a sudden and unexpected turn for the worst, especially considering that his past four seasons had been amongst the best of his career.

As a result of his struggles and the equally-paralyzing woes of those around him, the Devils are all but guaranteed to miss the post-season for the first time since the Fresh Prince of Bel Air last aired in primetime on NBC. But all is not lost.

The question then, if not of salvation, is of redemption. Though Brodeur is signed on through the 2011-12 season and may play beyond even that, the temptation of retirement for any professional athlete north of 37 grows stronger as each year passes. The Devils may not find themselves contending for a playoff spot, but they can at least reverse a disheartening downward trend and help pick up their iconic franchise leader in the process.

If Brodeur were to meander through a couple seasons with less than legendary numbers it wouldn’t take away from what he’s managed to accomplish on the ice, nor detract from his inevitable Hall of Fame status, but it would affect the lens through which the NHL community has come to view him. It’s a bittersweet consequence of annual dominance at a position where few have managed to stand the test of time.

If things don’t improve for the 18-year vet, Martin Brodeur would retire a mortal, leaving the NHL as humbly as he entered it in 1991-92. For most superstars nothing else would be expected. Most superstars, however, don’t flirt with league supremacy every single season for four consecutive presidential terms, and almost none are as reliable as the one currently battling on-ice demons in the twilight of his career.

For the generations of hockey fans who know nothing of an NHL sans Martin Brodeur, for those who grew up on his empty-net goals, painstaking consistency and sheer dominance on Playstations 1 through 3, a mortal Brodeur is out of the question.

Now as he and the Devils face the dawn of a new day, the second half of the 2010-11 season, it’s time for hockey fans to be there for him as he’s always been for us. It’s time for the NHL community to rally behind an embarrassingly-underachieving group of maximum salary players if for no other reason than to help Brodeur end his career as spectacularly as he filled it.

It may not help save the polar bears, or restore the charm of reading a daily newspaper, but at least we could walk away from this one knowing that we didn’t take Martin Brodeur, the perennial All-Star, for granted.

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