Brodeur snares 40th win
PITTSBURGH — Martin Brodeur picked an ideal time to reach another milestone.
Patrik Elias had the deciding goal in the shootout as the Devils increased their Atlantic Division lead to eight points with a 4-3 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins Thursday night.
Brodeur made 21 saves to reach the 40-win mark for the sixth time in his career.
"We always get up for these games; they're big games, four-point games," said New Jersey center Travis Zajac, who had a third-period goal. "If we want to stay ahead of them in the standings we've got to keep winning. We always find a way. It was a good team win."
Andy Greene had his first career goal, and Sergei Brylin and also scored for the Devils, who had lost three in a row but have reached 90 points.
Evgeni Malkin, Sergei Gonchar and Michel Ouellet scored for the Penguins, who had won three of four but fell two points behind Ottawa for the No. 4 seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race in losing to the Devils for the second time in 10 days.
"It's always better to get two points with the win, but New Jersey has a good team," Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury said. "And the guys didn't quit, they kept playing until the end and we were able to get a good point."
The sellout crowd went home unhappy when the left-shooting Elias skated far to his right on Fleury as the final shooter in the shootout. He skated from Fleury's left to his right before flipping the puck past him.
Brodeur stopped Pittsburgh's Erik Christensen, Malkin and Sidney Crosby to become the only goaltender to win 40 games in consecutive seasons on multiple occasions.
"Every time you win 40 games or get to these certain plateaus, they're pretty special," Brodeur said. "There's not many guys that are able to say that."
Ouellet had tied the game with 3:38 to play after Malkin intercepted an ill-advised pass by Scott Gomez behind the Devils goal line. Gomez was trying to get the puck to Greene, who was behind the net.
But Malkin stole the puck and fed Ouellet, who was skating alone down the slot and one-timed a slap shot high to the stick side of Brodeur.
Malkin opened the scoring 6:48 into the game while on the power play. Brodeur's stick got a piece of a Mark Recchi shot, and the puck deflected to an open Malkin, who scored his 30th of the season — tops among NHL rookies.
Greene tied the game 3 1/2 minutes into the second period when Fleury never saw the defenseman's wrist shot from the point while New Jersey was on the power play.
