Where do you start being proud of this team, as a fan? Playing hard every shift, consistently sticking to a system? Avoiding retaliatory penalties, even when Rinaldo, Giroux and Simmonds were dirtier than the bathroom in a South Street Philadelphia bar at three in the morning (they’ll have plenty of time to verify my comparison now). Marty not being at all fazed playing the puck, even under pressure? Stephen Gionta hitting about a foot larger than he stands? Kovulchuk’s power play goal, coming from Zubrus winning a monster faceoff in the zone? Even JR gave Kovy props in the post-game.

It starts behind the bench, with DeBoer retaining his composure through every situation. Compare him to Tortorella, who must be nursing a sore throat by the midway point of most games, or Laviolette, who pouts, frowns and gesticulates like he’s a marionette whose strings are wrapped around a drill bit. Up and down the coaching staff, you can see the development of the younger plays, the poise that the playoff newbies have exuded, and how every player focuses on every small detail.

This team is fun to watch. And we get to watch for at least another round of playoffs.

1. They do the little things. Clarkson’s Game 2-winning goal doesn’t happen if Elias doesn’t poke-check the puck away from his man on the half-boards. It’s not on the scoresheet, but that play turned a Flyers breakout into a goal-scoring chance for the Devils. Elias, Greene and Henrique have been executing the small area game very well.

2. Bryzgalov lost the nerves contest. Bryz started looking shaky handling a puck in front of the net, and shortly after that Larsson went top shelf on him; a few bouncing pucks didn’t take Larsson off his game. I don’t think the Rock needs to filled with fans wearing bear masks or carrying boxes from Build-A-Bear Workshop (although that would be really funny), but keeping Bryzgalov thinking is to the Devils’ advantage. Philadelphia can’t put their other Bob-lehead in net; the Devils owned him this season.

3. Matching lines and hitting hard works. Briere was -3 in Game 2, mostly because Larsson and Volchenkov, along with Henrique’s line, were pounding him and Giroux with regularity. The fact that Wayne Simmonds went flat-line stupid at the end of Game 2 indicates that frustrations are high.

4. The fourth line has stepped up. When you can roll four lines your top two lines are more productive. And the Devils’ fourth line has been outstanding through the playoffs.

5. You add by subtracting a negative. Kovulchuk wasn’t at his regular performance level, and finally resolving his status make everyone else’s job more clear. The Devils have shown they can stick to a system and work through adversity.

What else do I want? I’d like Sherry Ross to stop making inane comments and then repeating them ad nauseum. I’d like the NBC commentators to listen to Doc Emrick to hear how play by play can flow beautifully without comments that sound like Ross cast-offs. I’d like to understand how an obstruction penalty can be called after the horn has sounded (end of Period 2, Game 2) when there’s no movement in on-going play with which to interfere. And I’d like Bryce Salvador to score another goal.

The Devils lost as a team, just as they did in the Game 3 disaster. The question is: do the Devils have the team work and the individual accountability, and those things in the right proportions and blends, to win two games in a row, and make a playoff run that doesn’t end with a May Day call? As players, coaches, and trainers, when you look in the mirror, before, during or after Game 6 and (hopefully) Game 7, please make sure you can honestly say that you’re delivering on your end of the experiences we expect, we demand, and we hope for as your fans.

I had hoped, entering this season, that it would be a neat bookend to the first year in which Ben and were season ticket holders – the 99-00 Cup run, the first year he played ice hockey. In this last year regularly sitting next to me at dinner, on the couch and at games, I’ve probably over-rotated on high expectations, facing a shortly empty nest. But at the same time, sports memories from our last year in high school sit on the saddle point of experience. They are the net summation of people, places and things chosen for us by older family members, and the first events we can pick through given the independence of spending money, a driver’s license and formal adulthood.

Baseball had diminished interest for me in 1979 until my first sports hero Willie Stargell led his Pittsburgh Pirates to the World Series as I wrestled with college applications and parallel parking. Stargell united a diverse group of players; the “We Are Family” soundtrack to their pennant run wasn’t just a media post-production effect. They came together as a team, played as a team, and won as a team. Everyone did their part. Just a few months after he died in 2001, I had the opportunity to pick a jersey number of my own and I remembered my fondness for all things related to first baseman, number 8, Willie Stargell. The twin circles on my back are a continuous refresh of those memories that illustrated sportsmanship, leadership, bridging differences and taking personal responsibility for winning.

There are lifetimes of memories waiting to be created – for our families, for the Devils team’s families, for fans and potential fans across the Garden State – and two games in which to make them.

Pierre was the one coach that everybody loved. I really do mean everybody – players, parents, other coaches, the NJ Devils Youth Hockey board, refs, the Zamboni guy. It was impossible not to like him, with his outsized love of hockey and his innate ability to share that love. The players he coached in their single-digit years invited him back to their club as adults, so they could coach with him. There is no better statement about the quality of a coach’s character on and off the ice.

Pierre was fair, he was right, he instructed solidly and he had standards. He showed up and expected his players to do the same, whether they were 8 or 18 years old. He was “old school” in the sense that he valued hard work and simple drills that reinforced that work ethic. During one practice with my son’s bantam team (Pierre wasn’t our regular coach, he was merely helping out when needed) he was working on a breakout drill that involved skating outside of the faceoff dots. Kids were cheating through the middle so he stopped the drill, conveyed some wisdom in that Swiss-infused English that gave him enormous gravitas, got a few laughs, and then had the drill run correctly. No screaming, no throwing sticks, no tests of mettle or attitude on either side. When he blew the whistle, I think most players were secretly happy – anticipating – to see what he would share.

I think about Pierre nearly every week that I play with my adult league team. Moving slowly, I have a few extra seconds to think about my positioning on the ice, and I hear him instructing (not shouting) “Triangle!! Triangle!! Tri-ang-u-lation!!” It was his most valuable lesson, taught to PeeWees learning puck control and cycling: keep your forwards in a triangle around the net, move the puck, and move the players to maintain the triangle. The first rule of hockey – create space without the puck, create time by moving with it – conveyed using the simplest geometric shape, in a voice and style that 12 year olds visualized and committed to memory (most of them, at least). Six years later, I still hear echos of that coaching session; following sing-songy words that keep me from over-skating and passing out from exhaustion. Good advice transcends space and a lot of time.

With all of the negative press and horrifying stories about amateur athletics and youth sports, it’s critical to have role models and men like Pierre Pellaton. We all wish we could skate with him another season.

Let’s just say that a guy who knows a guy yelled at me for this, and says Patty is here for 1,000 career points (or more). With 816 career points in the NHL, all with the Devils, and averaging roughly 70 points a year, that’s two-three more solidly productive years. I’ll sign up to watch and cheer for those career goals (and points). And implicit in that is the hope that the NHL suffers no further labor issues, and that players benefit from a CBA that respects seniority, loyalty and market dynamics.

What I find amusing is that Bubba and I were just talking about Elias’ career with the Devils, and how he’s not only the scoring leader but also the “freshman development” leader. This came after a hot day of summer football practice spent indoctrinating incoming (high school) freshman, and thinking about his role as a literal senior on the field. As I’ve written here before, if the lessons Bubba takes from Elias are about loyalty (think contract), friendship (think Sykora jersey in 2000), leadership on and off the ice, flexibility (played all three forward positions this year), and dealing with negativism (when asked what he did differently to pick up scoring in the 2003 Cup Finals, Elias said “Didn’t listen to you guys” to the press), then he’s chosen a hero wisely for solid points and career goals.

I just made the final payment for our 2011-2012 season ticket shares, knowing full well it’s the last year of Elias’ contract with the Devils and Bubba’s last year of high school. Six summers ago I was delighted that I didn’t have to rationalize market pricing, free agency and loyalty to my 11-year old when Elias signed a seven-year deal with the Devils, knowing that they’d reach the horizons of their current time perspectives in the same calendar month. They are exactly 18 years apart; this spring Ben will be in the position Elias was on the day Ben was born: 18 years old and ready to face the world.

The day you become a parent is the day you begin the voyage of 10,000 steps toward an empty nest when your kids are adults and living most of their lives somewhere else. I’ve certainly thought about it over the last few years, but I never expected that the first indicator would come with mascot NJ Devil’s picture on it. I’ve already told the group I don’t know what I’ll do past next season, when I lose my regular seat mate, my hockey expert and my Carvel confidante.

As the Stanley Cup Finals play out to conclude this season, and we look forward to the draft and free agency that officially mark the start of the NHL New Year’s celebration, I believe I’m entitled to a wish and a resolution. My resolution is to cheer loudly for the home team, for all definitions of “home,” through college applications and high school sports and minor automobile damage.

My wish is that the Devils carry our 2011-2012 season as far into June as possible, stretching out this next series of shared family moments, momentarily delaying my inevitable step into the next phase of free agency.

For the first time since we began following our hometown hockey boys, there is no April joy, no second season, no reason to start watching out of market games because of their scheduling implications. The only things left to do are cheer against the Rangers and watch Zach Parise improve in his last four games before free agency.

As badly as the season started, there were so many things of which to be proud since mid-January. Patrik Elias was on fire, skating perhaps better than before the lockout season, and finishing in the slot as well as he did in 2001-2002. First hat trick in five years – against Philly, a team he just pwns – is evidence enough. Some real chemistry on the lines was a positive. Going 24-4-2 over a 30 game stretch; more than a third of a season of close to perfect hockey in every imaginable shape and form. And yet there were disasters as well: not correcting the trajectory before the season was out of hand (whether it was MacLean, Langenbrunner, or some combination of them and other factors we’ll never know, but I’m personally hoping Dallas goes deep so the Langebrunner trade yields a prospect). Injuries to the defense left us with three freshmen on the blueline nearly the whole season. Colin White’s play improved tremendously once Lemaire was back, and then he was repeatedly scratched with a nagging injury down the stretch. Salvador is gone. Taormina is recovering. There’s such potential there with Volchenkov, Tallinder, and Green all healthy at the same time.

With a long off-season, here’s hoping the Devils stay in shape and train through the warm months. That they come back in September hungry, wanting to never feel this way in early April again. That the echoes of Montreal’s fans signing “Hey Hey, Goodbye” resonate and reverberate, and remind them of what preparation and conditioning and team play can deliver or deny. It was a tough year to be a fan, and yet the last third of the season saw some of the best attendance at the Rock since the buiding opened.

Personally, I’ve yet to watch a baseball game or take out the golf clubs, subconsciously not wanting the miracle of the last two months to end, never wanting to see a wizardly Jacques Lemarie behind the curtain frantically telling us to pay attention to the flash and not the reality. But reality has set in, and for the first time in 15 years, I’m sorry to see the arrival of summer.

Three minutes in, we held a 1-0 lead. That held up through the first period, and into the early 2nd. We opened up leads of 3-1 and 4-2 into the third period, and could actually see a way to win the game. At that point – ten minutes left in the game, and one team’s season, holding on to a 2-goal lead against a team with three or four players who could rush the puck end to end, it would have been reasonable to change strategy. Shorten the bench, play a left wing lock, only skate the younger guys with better legs and effectively do the equivalent of a Dean Smith 4-corners offense to run the clock down.

Nobody made the suggestion. Everyone kept skating, on our three lines and two defensive pairings, even as our opponents tied the game and then took the lead with two minutes left. We played the last game the way we played the whole season – as a team. We lost, 5-4, but it was a team effort and the right way to lose.

A year from now, or three years from now, nobody will remember the name of the team we played, or who won the championship; even if we went on to win the playoffs we’d come home with a plastic medal and stories of temporary greatness that interested absolutely nobody. We play the game as adults because we like to play, and there is no game situation “important” enough to trump that. Makes me proud to be a member of this team.

But there’s good news, for the first time since the Kovulchuk signing: 9 points in 5 games, for a 90% points attainment. Goals by the handful. Production from all lines. Defense that plays to support the wings on the forecheck and move the puck out on the backcheck. A team that doesn’t fall apart in the 2nd period.

There was likely no single cause for the Devils’ first half collapse, nor a singularity pushing them forward with 40 games to go. Clearly, Langenbrunner wasn’t a great fit as captain – not that he’s a bad player, or the team was bad, but there was a mismatch (I quit two jobs for the same reasons; great outfits with smart people and good outputs, but not a good fit for me). Some of my root cause guesses (back in November) about training and conditioning weren’t that far off, according to Lemaire’s assessment of the team when he arrived. And maybe everyone had overly high expectatoins without any statistical evidence to support MacLean. It’s hard to assess his capabilties based on a short tenure in the AHL, especially when several players on that team were developed by his predecessors (Example: Kurt Kleinendorst. He has a great eye for talent and what to do with it, as a coach and a scout).

But I have hope. I’ve changed my deathwatch on the sidebar to an upwardly mobile ticker: points out of 8th place, and less snark in the stats below. With 36 games to go and 23 points, they’re looking at needing to go 28-9 or better down the stretch (figuring the #7-9 teams will play about 0.500 hockey, give or take a few games). In attainment terms, that’s 78% or more of the available points. It’s not impossible, but it’s far from likely. A 90% run rate in the last five games gives snowballs a brief chance in the Devil’s Den.

That makes the task at hand somewhat monumental: The Devils need to earn 70 points in 50 games, an average of 1.4 points game. It’s not impossible, but it’s a breakneck pace that they’ve sustained for only very short windows in seasons where they’ve won 40 or more games. More practically, that means their record for the rest of the season has be close to 32-12-6. That’s 20 games over 0.500 hockey, when they’re 12 games under right now. Again, the math says it’s possible, but the coaching, leadership and on-ice performance have to live up to what theory says. That’s what we’ve believed since the Kovulchuk signing, yet since then Devils goals have been harder to find than the Higgs boson.

Here’s the even more stark reality: If the Devils lose 17 more games in regulation they will assure themselves of watching the first round on TV. Seventeen regulation losses takes his team out of the realm of mathematics into the world of (possibly) admitting things are horribly wrong and there are absolutely no big men on Mulberry Street (apologies to Billy Joel, but the Devils are modeling their hockey organization after a Billy Joel marriage right now). Lose 17, and the best you can do is 86 points, which looks like 9th or 10th place. Not enough for a good draft pick, not enough for the playoffs, not enough for anything other than further aggravating the fans.

The Devils might be de facto eliminated by Valentine’s Day.

Will all those who believe that Lou is doing a great job as GM, and that MacLean is a great coach who isn’t getting help from his players, and Langenbrunner is a captain who is misunderstood please stand up? You’ll have your choice of seats at the Rock once the kids are back in school from President’s Week vacation.